Experimental investigation of the buckling of shallow spherical shells

In the present paper, the buckling behavior of clamped thin shallow spherical shells under external pressure is studied. Seventy-nine plastic shells formed by thermovacuum process were tested. The distributions of initial geometrical imperfections and vertical displacements were minutely measured with a differential transformer. It was possible to control the symmetrical initial geometrical imperfection of each specimen.Results indicate that the buckling phenomena of shallow spherical shells vary greatly with the symmetrical initial imperfection parameter η. In the case of the geometrical parameter λ larger than 5.5, the amplitude of the asymmetrical displacement component with the bifurcation buckling wave calculated by Huang becomes large immediately before buckling. The validity of Huang's theory for an initially perfect shell is experimentally demonstrated.