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Axial Compression & Post-Buckling Crushing of Cylindrical Shell with Self-Contact
Geometric nonlinear arc-length buckling and self-contact crushing of a uniform cylindrical shell under pure axial compression.
Thin-walled cylindrical shells under axial compression exhibit sudden post-buckling snap-through accompanied by localized folds that make interior contact. The native WebCAE arc-length solver (method=arc) seamlessly traverses limit load points and negative-stiffness post-critical branches. A two-sided penalty self-contact formulation prevents interpenetration of collapsed folds, capturing 44 active contact pairs as the 160 mm tall cylinder contracts by 42.65 mm under 50 kN axial compression.
1. Geometry & FEA Mesh
- •Uniform cylindrical shell: radius R = 40 mm, height H = 160 mm, wall thickness t = 1.2 mm.
- •Fine uniform discretization: 32 circumferential sectors × 20 elevation bays = 640 MITC4 quads (672 nodes, 3,744 active DOFs).
- •Two-sided penalty self-contact with slaveoffset = 1.6 mm, masteroffset = 1.6 mm, penalty stiffness = 1,000 N/m.
- •Arc-length continuation with 23 converged equilibrium increments through post-buckling contact.
2. Loads & Boundary Conditions
- •Bottom rim at z = 0 clamped in all degrees of freedom (ux = uy = uz = rx = ry = rz = 0).
- •Pure axial compression along Z (total force Fz = -50 kN) applied uniformly across top rim nodes (z = H).
- •No artificial lateral forces; natural modal imperfection (0.15 mm = 0.375% of radius) triggers physical diamond-mode bifurcation.
3. Simulation Results & Findings
- ✓Full arc-length equilibrium convergence across 23 increments (149 Newton iterations).
- ✓Top axial crush reaches uz = -42.65 mm, with severe radial wall collapse ΔR = -35.65 mm (R_min = 4.35 mm).
- ✓44 active self-contact pairs engaged with stable sliding and sticking contact states.
Enables crashworthiness, pipe crushing, and energy absorber simulation without costly specialized non-linear packages.
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- ✓Nonlinear Contact & Buckling (Kσ, MITC4, RBE2/RBE3)
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