Stresses around a small circular cutout in a cylindrical shell subjected to asymmetric bending

The problem of stress concentration around cutouts in shells is an important one in the design of nuclear pressure vessels, boilers, pressure hulls of submarines, aircraft structures, pipe connections and tube and ball mills used in chemical industries. By using the finite-difference scheme suggested by Budiansky, the solution to the problem of a cylindrical shell without a cutout, subjected to an asymmetric load, is derived first. Then, the negatives of the stress resultants and stress couples at a given radius obtained from the above solution are combined with a transverse shear force to form the edge conditions for a circular cylindrical shell containing a circular cutout of radius a. The desired results are finally obtained by superposing these two solutions. © 1977, Institution of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.