The buckling and collapse behaviour of saddle-supported cylinders - Keynote Lecture

Recent work by the present authors on the collapse conditions for horizontal cylindrical saddle supported storage vessels is described and reviewed. Attention is directed to a range of geometries, typically R/t < 200, where plastic collapse type failure may be relevant. A series of forty tests on end-supported model cylinders loaded centrally by a rigid saddle were performed and a variety of theoretical methods were used for comparison with the test results. It was found that the best agreement was obtained by using an elasticplastic finite element analysis approach. The results of a parametric survey based on the elastic-plastic finite element method are summarised. The paper reports some validation checks, which have been performed to support the parametric results.