On the stability of thin-walled, corrugated, circular cylindrical shells under external pressure

Thin-walled, corrugated, circular cylindrical shells under external pressure have repeatedly buckled at much lower values than has been predicted from simple orthotropic shell theory, where a flexural mode of buckling is assumed, in-plane to the cross-section of the tube. In the present paper it is shown that there exists always a combined, torsional–flexural, out-of-plane mode of buckling, frequently corresponding to an extremely low critical pressure. The need to design these tubes also with respect to torsional stiffness is emphasized, and a formula for the buckling pressure is proposed.