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J.M.F.G. Holst and J.M. Rotter

conclusion was that axial compressive stresses near the base are not critical but that distortion and overstressing of the top ring is important. Their analyses also show that there is a signicant bending effect particularly in the medium range of n due to the greater shell bending participation with the heavier wind girder. This leads to circumferential stresses in the wind girder, which are substantially greater than the meridional stresses at the bottom of the shell. For a specic example with a very strong wind girder at a relatively low harmonic, they show that the circumferential stresses are critically high whereas the meridional membrane stresses can easily be tolerated. Thus, they conclude that the circumferential stress at the eaves is critical. However, studies of this kind are difcult to use. Real uneven settlements do not occur in a single harmonic form, and the chief reason for studying harmonic settlements is that the results can be summed to produce different harmonic proles that lead to quite different conclusions from those that are obtained from a single harmonic alone. Moreover, the summation of harmonics is only valid for linear behaviour, and one might suppose that it is not too far wrong for mild nonlinearities. However, the calculated response is highly nonlinear (Fig. 4.6), so such a summation is certainly invalid. Given that high axial stresses are induced by small settlements in localised waveforms (corresponding to events like in Fig. 4.1), their conclusion that axial compression stresses are not critical should be treated with caution. Buckling investigations Apart from those described below, no calculations are known to have explored snap-through or bifurcation buckling events in cylinders with settlement displacements at the boundaries. Because the severity of a buckling event can only be determined with reference to the postbuckling response, and postbuckling is necessarily highly nonlinear, the study of buckling cannot be usefully conducted by considering the response to individual harmonic components. Instead, it is necessary to explore the response to an individual local settlement pattern to investigate buckling. The design methodology set out in section Settlement components and their consequences suggests that axial compression buckling may be important for any shell that is also subjected to an external axial compression. However, further studies are needed to explore when buckling may occur, the nature of the postbuckling path and the sensitivity to geometric imperfections.

Local settlement studies

Local effects of uneven settlement: uplift displacements The above studies have attempted to deal with the general case of a settlement pattern that could be in any form by characterising general forms through harmonic analysis. However, the commonest occurrence of uneven settlement arises from