A Report on Three Series of Experiments and the Description of a Simplified Model of the Thin Wall Cylinder and Cone Buckling Mechanism

Three series of experiments were performed to investigate the nature of the buckling phenomenon. They were: a) influence of an increasing dimple on the buckling load of a cylinder; b) investigation of the strain distribution on one cylinder, after one or more waves were imposed on it; c) measurements of lateral deflections at buckling. The results of such experiments give some support to the idea of a buckling model, which can be of eventual interest to the thin wall cylinder and cone buckling problem, where a non-linear system (the buckled band) is considered in series with a linear system (the unbuckled portion of the cylinder, plus the testing-machine )