On the Buckling of Functionally Graded Cylindrical Shells Under Combined External Pressure and Axial Compression

The stability problem of a circular cylindrical shell composed of functionally graded materials with elasticity modulus varying continuously in the thickness direction under combined external pressure and axial compression loads is studied in this paper. The formulation is based on the first-order shear deformation theory. A load interaction parameter is defined to express the combination of applied axial compression and external pressure. The stability equations are derived by the adjacent equilibrium criterion method. These equations are employed to analyze the buckling behavior and obtain the critical buckling loads. A detailed numerical study is carried out to bring out the effects of the power law index of functionally graded material, load interaction parameter, thickness ratio, and aspect ratio on the critical buckling loads. The validity of the present analysis was checked by comparing the present results with those results available in literature.