Imperfection Sensitivity of Critical Points28
Luis A. Godoy · 2024
The nonlinear postbuckling analysis of perfect structural systems was available since the early 1940s, when von Karman and Tsien [ 40 ] computed descending postbuckling paths for axially loaded cylindrical shells. It was not clear by then how the shell would actually behave having two close equilibrium paths in the vicinity of a bifurcation point. In 1950 Donnell and Wang published a classical paper about an imperfect cylinder under axial load [ 9 ]. For simplicity of the computations, the shape of the imperfection was the same as the deflected shape of the structure at each loading stage, but even for this simplified model the results showed a clear reduction in the maximum load that can be reached.