Instability of Cylindrical Shells Subjected to Axisymmetric Moving Loads

Using a Donnell-type nonlinear theory and the stability in the small concept of Poincare´, the instability of an infinite-length cylindrical shell subjected to a broad class of axisymmetric loads moving with constant velocity is studied. Special cases of the general loading function include the moving-ring, step, and decayed-step loads. The analysis is carried out with a double Laplace transform, functional-difference technique. Numerical results are presented for the case of the moving-ring load.