Nonlinear Elastic Buckling of CFRP Reinforced Steel Cylinders under Axial Compression

Abstract

In this paper, the strengthening of thin-walled metallic shells with the application of CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced polymer) has been investigated. To lower down the downside of the lower stiffness exhibited by CFRP shells and to diminish the major problem associated with steel shells, a new composite sandwich structure has been introduced in this paper and effect of CFRP reinforcements under axial compression has been studied through three kinds of analytical procedures; the linear Eigen value problem, the modified RS (reduced stiffness) analysis and the fully nonlinear numerical experiment. With these multiple treatments it has been suggested that recently developed modified RS analysis which effectively compute the lower bounds provides the significant information to evaluate the buckling capacity of reinforced shells that display the unstable behaviour and imperfection-sensitivity than the general RS Analysis. This paper also illustrates the application of the methodology to cases of axial loaded shells with the varying thickness of veneers of CFRP.