Summary

When a structure is put under an increasing compressive load, it becomes unstable and buckling occurs. Buckling is a particularly significant concern in designing shell structures such as aircraft, automobiles, ships, or bridges. This book discusses stability analysis and buckling problems and offers practical tools for dealing with uncertainties that exist in real systems. The techniques are based on two complementary theories which are developed in the text. First, the probabilistic theory of stability is presented, with particular emphasis on reliability. Both theoretical and computational issues are discussed. Secondly, the authors present the alternative to probability based on the notion of 'anti-optimization', a theory that is valid when the necessary information for probabilistic analysis is absent, that is, when only scant data are available. Design engineers, researchers, and graduate students in aerospace, mechanical, marine, and civil engineering who are concerned with issues of structural integrity will find this book a useful reference source.