Lower-Bound Assessment of Creep Buckling Strength

A method is developed for predicting the creep buckling behavior of complex pressurized components from the results of ambient, short-term buckling tests on geometrically similar components. The method has been tested against experimental data on boss-loaded spherical shells and shows reasonable accuracy of prediction of the buckling load after a given period of time. Application to the design analysis of a component for a boiler is described. An analysis of the approximations made in developing the method is included. It is shown that a lower bound on buckling strength at a given time is obtained.