Local Circumferential Buckling of Thin Circular Cylindrical Shells

The problem of circumferential buckling of a thin circular cylindrical shell due to compressive hoop stresses which vary in the axial direction is examined. For extremely localised compressive hoop stress distributions resulting from thermal discontinuity effects, or from a uniform, radial line loading, the buckle pattern should also be localised. Simplified analyses into these two types of problem are considered which show that only a limited number of buckle deflection modes needs to be assumed.