The influence of loading eccentricity on the buckling of axially compressed imperfect composite cylinders

The buckling of imperfect composite cylinders under concentric and eccentric compression is investigated experimentally and numerically, with particular attention given to the imperfection sensitivity of the shells. A series of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic cylinders have been tested under different load eccentricities to validate the corresponding nonlinear numerical analyses performed in this study. A good agreement between the experimental and numerical results was achieved through use of the ABAQUS/Explicit finite-element code and the introduction of initial imperfections. Both the experimental and the numerical results show that the knockdown factor increases as the loading eccentricity grows.