Axial compressive bucklings of hybrid FRP sandwich circular cylindrical shells with soft core

Abstract

The buckling of hybrid FRP sandwich circular cylindrical shells under axial compression was analyzed. These had both faces with different elastic orthotropies and thicknesses, and an orthotropic core. In a particular case of sandwich cylindrical shells with soft core having low shear rigidity, an explicit expression for buckling load with axially symmetric mode could be presented. In order to verify the above analysis, experiments were carried out on the three kinds of hybrid sandwich cylindrical shells having aluminum inner face, filament-wound or aluminum outer face, and polyurethane formed core, which would be useful for the low temperature liquid container. It was found that the buckling took place in shear mode in the core with almost the same values as predicted in the analysis.

Keywords:

• buckling analysis
• hybrid FRP
• sandwich cylindrical shell
• soft core
• axial compressive test