Chaos theory applied to buckling analysis of composite cylindrical shell

The present paper proposes a chaos approach for the buckling analysis of cylindrical shells under axial compression. The approach is developed using concepts of chaos theory, and is applied to investigate the buckling behavior of sandwich composite shells that are imperfection-sensitivity structures. Two shell configurations are here analyzed, one of them with cut-outs. The goal of the approach is to obtain an erosion profile as function of the increasing axial load, that through a graphical visualization allows to illustrating concisely the effect of geometric imperfections on the load-carrying capability of the shells. The paper presents an innovative use of the concepts of chaos. The approach can be adopted when an experimental database of imperfections is rarely available to achieve a first assessment of the imperfection sensitivity of axially-compressed shells.