Finite element analysis for buckling of pressure vessels with ellipsoidal head

In this paper, a finite element analysis is performed for buckling of the pressure vessels with ellipsoidal head subjected to uniform pressure. According to the characteristic of deformation of the pressure vessel, :it is divided into some identical substructures. The degrees of freedom (DOFs) of joint nodes between the neighboring substructures are classified as master and slave ones. The stress and strain distributions of the whole structure are obtained by solving the static equations for only one substructure by introducing the displacement constraints between master and slave DOFs. The complex constraint method has been used to get the buckling load and mode for the whole structure by solving the eigenvalue problem for only one substructure without introducing any additional approximation. Some numerical examples have been given to illustrate the high efficiency and validity of this method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.