Mode Interaction of Axially Stiffened Cylindrical Shells: Effects of Stringer Axial Stiffness, Torsional Rigidity, and Eccentricity

This paper deals with the effect of stringer axial stiffness, torsional rigidity, and eccentricity on the panel initial postbuckling behavior and mode interaction of axially stiffened cylindrical shells. As far as the local panel mode is concerned, the cylinder is taken to be integrally stiffened and the postbuckling redistribution of the axial load-carrying capacity between the skin and stringers is investigated. It is found that although the buckling analysis is more or less identical to previous analyses, there are significant changes in the quartic term of the potential energy of the local mode and hence, the imperfection-sensitivity of the structure is altered. These changes are due to the interaction between the stringers and the skin in the postbuckling analysis. In addition, to assess the effect of a nonlinear prebuckling state resulting from the presence of local imperfections, Koiter’s theory of amplitude modulation of the local mode is applied to an example problem of interest.