Buckling of compound hyperbolic paraboloidal shells

Abstract This paper presents the first elastic buckling analysis of a compound hyperbolic paraboloidal (hypar) shell under a uniformly distributed load. The compound shell is composed of four hypar panels of rectangular ground plan. A special feature of this analysis is the use of the pulse function to deal with the curvature discontinuities at the ridges. The stability-governing equations are derived from the general equations of Reissner for the linear elastic buckling of hypobolic paraboloidal shells, taking into account the curvature discontinuities at the ridges. These equations are then solved in an approximate manner by assuming trigonometric variations of the buckling deformations. Numerical results are presented, which show that the buckling modes of the shell are either symmetrical or antisymmetrical about both axes of symmetry. For antisymmetric buckling, the critical load of the compound shell is the same as that for a single hypar panel.