Limit analyses of cylinders with circular opening under pure bending moment

In this paper, the results of limit analyses of a cylindrical shell with a circular hole under the action of a pure bending moment at ends are presented in dimensionless form for a wide range of geometric parameters which are of practical interest. Analytical estimation of lower bound limit bending moments are carried out by nonlinear programming using Feasible Sequential Quadratic Programming (FSQP). The finite element calculations of limit bending moments consist of elastic-plastic method and lower & upper bound predictions by elastic compensation method using ANS YS suite of program. The analytical results are then compared with finite element calculations and the correlation between them is discussed. The analytical lower bound estimations and elastic-plastic results are in good agreement with lower bound values found by elastic compensation methods.