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Application Of Random Geometric Imperfection Method To Nonlinear Buckling Analysis Of Spherical Shell, Zhixin Xiong, Zhiquan Huang, Xiaochuan Yu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

This paper focuses on spherical shells with random geometric imperfections under uniform external pressure. An extensive numerical investigation is performed to calculate the buckling loads of perfect and imperfect spherical shells. To discuss the effects of initial geometric imperfections, a finite element analysis model of the perfect spherical shell is considered to obtain its first 60 modes. Then, the consistent imperfect buckling analysis method is applied to analyze the nonlinear stability of the spherical shells with geometric imperfections. The shapes of the shell in the 1st to 20th eigenmode are considered. A lower buckling load is found corresponding to the …