Buckling of spherical shells with pitting corrosion under external pressure

ABSTRACT

The buckling characteristics of spherical shells with uniform and randomly distributed pitting corrosion under external pressure were investigated. Ten spherical shells were fabricated from 304 stainless steel sheets, and cylindrical holes were introduced into the outside surface of the spherical shell by milling to simulate pitting corrosion. Six spherical shells with uniform pitting corrosion and four spherical shells with random pitting corrosion were fabricated. The wall thickness, diameter, and geometry of each spherical shell test model were measured and compared with those of the ideal model. The buckling load of the ten spherical shells with pitting corrosion was obtained experimentally. The effects of the pitting shape, size and distribution area of local corrosion on the buckling behaviour of a spherical shell were carefully analyzed. In addition, the numerical results were compared with the experimental results to verify the accuracy of the numerical model.

KEYWORDS:

• Local corrosion
• random pitting corrosion
• uniform pitting corrosion
• buckling
• spherical shell

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [grant number BK20211343], the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China [grant number 19KJA530002], and the State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) [grant number: GKZD010081], Excellent Youth Foundation of Jiangsu Scientific Committee [grant number: BK20190103].