A circumferentially enhanced Hermite reproducing kernel (HRK) meshfree method is developed for the buckling analysis of Kirchhoff–Love cylindrical shells. In this method, in order to accurately represent the circumferential periodicity of cylindrical shells, the shell mid-surface is first discretized by a set of physical nodes in the two-dimensional parametric space, thereafter another set of dummy nodes are added by a straightforward periodic translation of the physical nodes. Subsequently the meshfree shape functions are constructed using both the physical nodes and the dummy nodes through a periodically linked relationship. The resulting meshfree shape functions exhibit the desired circumferential periodicity. The meshfree shape functions are formulated in the HRK framework which can be degenerated to the standard reproducing kernel (RK) shape functions just by removing the rotational terms. Meanwhile, the cylindrical shell buckling equations are rationally derived from the consistent linearization of the internal virtual work. During the meshfree discretization, the in-plane shell displacements are represented by the conventional RK shape functions, while the out-of-plane shell deflection is approximated by the Hermite meshfree shape functions with both directional and rotational degrees of freedom. The numerical integration of the material as well as the geometric stiffness matrices are carried out by the strain smoothing sub-domain stabilized conforming integration (SSCI) method. Numerical examples show that the proposed approach yields very favorable results for the buckling analysis of cylindrical shells.
