A symplectic method and dynamic buckling of elastic cylindrical shells under both axial impact and internal or external pressure

The dynamic pre-buckling of finite cylindrical shells was discussed under both axial impact and internal or external pressure. A Hamiltonian system was constructed for the fundamental problem of the dynamic buckling, thereby problems of critical loads and buckling modes were reduced to determinations of eigenvalues and eigensolutions in a symplectic space and a symplectic method was proposed. Modes of the non-axisymmetric buckling were obtained by the proposed method. Numerical results show the critical loads, buckling modes and some phenomena for cylindrical shells.