04.21: Buckling of externally pressurised spherical shells: Experimental results compared with recent design recommendations

The buckling resistance of a steel spherical dome shell under external pressure is controlled by the geometry, material properties and fabrication quality class [1, 2]. A simple algorithm to determine the buckling resistance of such shells with a clamped boundary, in terms of the description used in [1], was recently developed by the authors [3, 4]. The assessment is based on the elastic critical pressure p Rcr and the plastic resistance pressure p Rpl , followed by evaluation of the imperfection sensitivity for the assumed fabrication quality class, assessment of the other buckling parameters that define the capacity curve, deduction of the characteristic value of the buckling resistance p Rk , and determination of the design buckling resistance p Rd . The new procedure was previously [3, 4] compared with the current design recommendations [2] and was found to give 30‐45% higher buckling resistances in some cases, making the new proposals less conservative. The safety of the new proposals is here compared with many previous experimental results that have been presented in the literature. It is found that the new proposals are safe and more economic than the current rules.