A Numerical Method for the Limit Analysis of General Shells of Revolution

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the limit analysis of shells of revolution made of a rigid-perfectly-plastic material that obeys Tresca's yield condition. The four-dimensional yield hypersurface for shells of revolution was once presented by E.T. Onat and W. Prager. Using this yield surface, a numerical solution for simply supported conical shells was obtained by R.H. Lance and E.T. Onat. Fundamentally based on their method and considering more precisely the yield hypersurface, a numerical method is presented that can be applied to general shells of revolution. As numerical examples, the solutions for truncated conical shells, and pressure vessels with rigid circular plates are presented. These solutions verify that this method is correct.