Abstract: Cylindrical shells are widely used in civil engineering. Examples include cooling towers, nuclear containment vessels, metal silos and tanks for storage of bulk solids and liquids, and pressure vessels. Cylindrical shells subjected to non-uniform wind pressure display different buckling behaviours from those of cylinders under uniform external pressure. At different aspect ratios, quite complex buckling modes occur. The geometric nonlinearity may have a significant effect on the buckling behavior. This paper presents a widely study of the nonlinear buckling behavior of cylindrical shells of uniform thickness under wind loading. The finite element analyses indicate that for stocky cylinders, the nonlinear buckling modes are the circumferential compression buckling mode, which is similar to cylinders under uniform external pressure, while for cylinders in mediate length, pre-buckling ovalization of the cross-section has an important influence on the buckling strength.
