Effects of Boundary Conditions and Initial Out-of-Roundness on the Strength of Thin-Walled Cylinders Subject to External Hydrostatic Pressure

Using classical small-deflection theory, an investigation was made of the effects of boundary conditions and initial out-of-roundness on the strength of cylinders subject to external hydrostatic pressure. The equations developed in this paper for initially out-of-round cylinders with clamped ends, and a slightly modified form of the equations previously derived by Bodner and Berks for simply supported ends, were applied to some actual test results obtained from nine steel cylinders which had been subjected to external hydrostatic pressure. Three semiempirical methods for determining the initial out-of-roundness of the cylinders also were investigated and these are described in the paper. The investigation indicates that if the initial out-of-roundness is determined in a manner similar to that suggested by Holt then the correlation between the experimental and theoretical results is quite good. The investigation also indicates that while the difference in collapse pressures for clamped-end and simply supported perfect cylinders may be quite considerable, this does not appear to be the case when initial out-of-roundnesses of a practical magnitude are considered.