Abstract
A reinforced cylindrical shell which is loaded with a uniform excess external radial pressure can support a load considerably greater than the elastic limit. While several recent investigations have been concerned with finding the collapse load of the shell, no attention has been paid to the corresponding deformations. Although rigid-plastic theory is sufficient to determine the collapse load, the more complex elastic-plastic theory must be used in investigating the displacements. In the present paper the elastic-plastic problem is stated for an ideal sandwich shell, and the stresses and deformations are computed for a particular example. Since the computations are found to be quite laborious, an approximate technique, applicable to all shells, is developed. The paper closes with some comments on the relation between the theoretical results and the behavior to be expected in real shells.
