Static path jumping to attain postbuckling equilibria of a compressed circular cylinder

The postbuckling behavior of an axially compressed circular cylindrical she ll is exceedingly complicated due to an infinite number of closely spaced p ostbuckling branches and bifurcation points. The minimum strength existing in the deep bottom of the postbuckling region may serve as a design limit. The primary concern in this present paper is to compute this stable postbuc kling equilibrium solution by two different approaches: One is to repeat th e procedures of tracing unstable branches, pinpointing bifurcation points a nd branch-switching in order to carefully approach to the target. The other is to trigger a static jump to the target by two-parametric loading. As a numerical example, a perfect circular cylindrical panel is analyzed to show that a direct jump from the undeformed state to a stable postbuckling solu tion is possible with a proper choice of the load perturbation.