Design Analysis for Buckling of Tanks and Silos

When subject to combinations of internal pressure and axial compression, experience shows that the often thin cylindrical shell walls of tanks and silos are prone to a local form of buckling failure that is essentially axisymmetric and is strongly influenced by the nature of the end or intermediate support conditions. This paper will outline the basis of an analytical solution to the inherently nonlinear elastic–plastic buckling into axisymmetric modes, in which end constraints and arbitrary radial pressure loading are modeled as essentially loading imperfections on an otherwise linear, classical, critical buckling formulation. Closed form analytical expressions for the imperfect behavior, including geometric imperfections, are then used to predict either first surface or full section plasticity, allowing buckling failure to be summarized in a form that is closely analogous to the Ayrton–Perry formula for the buckling of columns. It is suggested that a suitably simplified form of this general approach to axisymmetric buckling, when combined with similarly simple methods for the buckling into nonaxisymmetric modes, could provide an important alternative to the current procedures for the buckling design of thin-walled, cylindrical, tanks and silos.