Buckling of FGM elliptical cylindrical shell under follower lateral pressure

A review of previous studies shows that although there is a considerable difference between buckling loads of structures under follower and non-follower lateral loads, only the buckling load of FGM elliptical cylindrical shell under nonfollower lateral load was investigated in the literature. This study is the first to obtain the buckling load of elliptical FGM cylindrical shells under follower lateral load and also make a comparison between buckling loads of elliptical FGM cylindrical shells under follower and non-follower lateral loads. Moreover, this research is the first one to derive the load potential function of elliptical cylindrical shell. In this regard, the FGM cylindrical elliptical shell was modeled using the semi-analytical finite strip method and based on the First Shear Deformation Theory (FSDT). The shell is discretized by strip elements aligned in the longitudinal direction. The Lagrangian and harmonic shape functions were considered in the circumference and longitudinal directions, respectively. The buckling pressure of the shell under follower and non-follower lateral loads was obtained from eigenvalue problem. The results obtained from the model were compared with those presented in the literature to evaluate the validity of the model. A comparison index was defined to compare the buckling loads of the shell under follower and nonfollower lateral load. A parametric study was carried out to investigate the effects of material properties and shell geometry characteristics on the comparison index. For the elliptical cylindrical shells with length-to-radius ratio greater than 16 and majorto-minor axis ratio greater than 0.6, the comparison index reaches to more than 20 percent which is significant. Moreover, the maximum difference is about 30 percent in some cases. The results obtained from the parametric study indicate that the buckling load of long elliptical cylindrical shell under non-follower load is not reliable.