On stability of cylindrical shells of variable thickness with initial imperfections.

The paper outlines a numerical method for stability analysis of cylindrical shells with initial imperfections. We solve a nonlinear buckling problem for a cylindrical shell with variable wall thickness under surface pressure. The imperfections of the shell are modeled as the first buckling mode. A probabilistic approach is used to determine the reliability against buckling of the cylindrical shell with the probability density of initial imperfections represented by uniform distribution, triangular distribution, or Gaussian distribution [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]