A SIMPLIFIED SOLUTION FOR STRESSES IN THICK-WALL CYLINDERS FOR VARIOUS LOADING CONDITIONS

The determination of stresses in thick-wall cylinders, under non-unifo rm external pressure, may be performed by means of Airy's stress funct ion approach. In this work a simplified closed-form solution has been obtained for hollow cylinders subjected to loads symmetrically distrib uted about an axis of the cross-section, acting in the radial directio n over part of the circumference. The cylinder is considered to be lon g, elastic and with a constant wall-thickness. The problem may be trea ted as a two-dimensional elasticity problem of plane-strain, since the loads are uniformly distributed along the length. The distribution of pressure is represented by the Fourier series, whose coefficients are calculated for some simple cases through elementary functions or, in general, by numerical integration. The oscillations of the expanded fu nctions in the Fourier series are dampened by introducing Lanczos's si gma factors in the corresponding Fourier coefficients. Additionally, t he finite Fourier series is evaluated by proper three-term recurrence relations. Bessel functions, when they appear, are computed by their p olynomial approximations or series representation with nested-form for mulas. The results obtained using these computational tools are accura te enough for practical purposes. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.