Shell structures—thin, curved elements such as cylinders, spheres and domes—are prized for their high strength-to-weight ratio but are exceptionally sensitive to buckling instabilities. Even minute ...

From oil drums to flying rockets, cylindrical shells are valued for their load-carrying capacity. When sufficiently compressed, they buckle, with the phenomenon taking many forms, from periodic ...

Roberto Ballarini, University of Houston Thomas and Laura Hsu Professor and department chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is leading the effort to predict the detrimental effects of ...

An engineer has designed a model to guide better design of thin-walled structures, like planes, cars and submersibles, to avoid catastrophe like sudden collapse due to buckling. A University of ...