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 ...

Functionally graded shell structures combine spatially varying material properties with curved geometries to achieve tailored strength, stiffness and stability characteristics. These shells often ...

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 ...

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 ...