Elasto-plastic stability of single-layer cylindrical reticulated shells

Until now, researches about elasto-plastic stability of reticulated domes have gotten fruitful results, but few on the elasto-plastic stability behaviors of cylindrical reticulated shells and the 'Safety coefficient' used in the check of stability are still unknown. Therefore, based on commercial finite element software ANSYS and self-compiled pre-post-processing programs, more than 600 examples of cylindrical reticulated shells are analyzed, using accurate complete-process method with both geometric and material nonlinearity.Some characteristic responses such as critical loads, buckling modes and distribution maps of plastic level are collected. The effects of various geometrical and structural parameters, such as initial imperfection, unsymmetrical distribution of loads, on the behaviors of elasto-plastic stability are investigated. Plastic reduced coefficients are defined to indicate the decrease of stability critical loads of reticulated shells under consideration of material nonlinearity. The plastic reduced coefficients of cylindrical reticulated shells are summarized to be 0.362~0.578. 'Safety coefficient'is then quantified as follows, 3.4 for cylindrical reticulated shells supported along two longitudinal edges, 4.5 for that supported on all boundaries, 5.4 for that supported on two end diaphragms.