Thermoelastic buckling of thin cylindrical shells based on improved stability equations

The nonlinear strain-displacement relations in general cylindrical coordinates are simplified by Sander's assumptions for the cylindrical shells and substituted into the total potential energy function for thermoelastic loading. The Euler equations are then applied to the functional of energy, and the general thermoelastic equations of nonlinear shell theory are obtained and compared with the Donnel equations. An improvement is observed in the resulting equations as no length limitations are imposed on a thin cylindrical shell. The stability equations are then derived through the second variation of potential energy, and the same improvements are extended to the resulting thermoelastic stability equations. Based on the improved equilibrium and stability equations, the magnitude of thermoelastic buckling of thin cylindrical shells under different thermal loadings is obtained. The results are extended to short and long thin cylindrical shells.