Chapter 9

Cylindrical shells under global shear loading

G. Michel, J.F. Jullien and J.M. Rotter

Introduction
Tanks must often be built in areas that are susceptible to earthquakes. The most dangerous accident under seismic action is probably the leakage of contained products, rather than buckling. For this reason, the progressive damage caused by repeated buckling under cyclically varying horizontal loading may be more important than a static buckling failure, but the latter is clearly an initial lower bound. For the safe and reliable design of cylindrical storage tanks against earthquakes, it is important to understand and predict the stability of vertical axis cylindrical shells under both static and cyclic horizontal loading. A horizontal load applied to a cylinder with a vertical axis is conventionally termed a transverse shear load (not to be confused with shear transverse to the thickness of the shell). This transverse shear load or global shear causes a buckling mode characterised by diagonal shear wrinkles (Michel et al. 2000b) (Fig. 9.1). However, because it also causes global bending of the cylinder, diamond-shaped
Axis of loading

Figure 9.1 Buckling mode under transverse global shear load.