In some cases the optimum is the minimum of the objective function (mathematical optimum), but in other cases the optimum is given by a technical constraint (technical optimum). The present paper shows the both types in two problems. The first problem is to find the optimum dimensions of a ring-stiffened circular cylindrical shell subject to external pressure, which minimize the structural cost...

PANDA2, a computer program for the minimum-weight design of elastic perfect and imperfect stiffened cylindrical panels and shells under multiple sets of combined loads, is used to obtain optimum designs of uniformly axially compressed elastic internal T-ring and external T-stringer stiffened cylindrical shells with initial imperfections in the form of the general buckling mode. The optimum desi...

Thin walled cylindrical shells are important components of industrial structures such as liquid storage tanks, silos, etc. Shell buckling is usually a major failure mode of thin walled shells under extreme loads such as earthquakes. Longitudinal and radial stiffeners are generally used in order to increase buckling capacity of thin walled shells. During an earthquake, cylindrical shells may exp...

Cylindrical shells, unstiffened or stiffened with rings and/or stringers are commonly used in offshore structures as main loading-carrying members. Comprehensive theoretical work and experimental studies on the buckling behavior of cylindrical shells have been carried out in the past. The increasing offshore application of stiffened cylindrical shells has raised some new challenges that need to...

The Layerwise Shell Theory is used to model discretely stiffened laminated composite plates and cylindrical shells for stress, vibration, pre-buckling and post-buckling analyses. The layerwise theory reduces a 3-D problem to a 2-D problem by expanding the 3-D displacement field as a function of a surface-wise 2-D displacement field and a 1-D interpolation polynomial through the shell thickness....

We have recently proposed a new concept for deployable reflectors consisting of a thin parabolic carbon-fibre-reinforced-plastic (CFRP) shell stiffened along the edge by an elastically collapsible stiffener. Here we show that a stiffener accounting for less than 10% of the total mass of the reflector increases the stiffness of the softest deformation mode of the deployed reflector by 48 times, ...

Different analytical approaches can be used to model the forced response of the beam-stiffened plates or shells that are commonly found in many practical structures from ships to aircraft. A popular method is to smear the mass and stiffness properties of the beam stiffeners to give an orthotropic plate or shell. This is simpler than modelling discrete stiffeners. This paper considers the exampl...

The high efficiency of monocoque cylindrical shells in carrying axial loads is curtailed by their extreme sensitivity to imperfections. For practical applications, this issue has been alleviated by introducing closely stiffened shells which, however, require expensive manufacturing. Here we present an alternative approach that provides a fundamentally different solution. We design symmetry-brea...

A belt-conveyor bridge is built inside a ring-stiffened cylindrical shell. The unknown variables are the shell thickness as well as the thickness and the number of flat rings. Optimum solutions are evaluated for different bridge lengths. The design constraints relate to the local shell buckling strength, to the panel ring buckling and to the deflection of the bridge. The cost function includes ...