Abstract: Toroidal shells are important structure in space flight, nuclear plant and ocean engineering rather than a part of bellows. Their buckling has been interested for the resent three decades, however work for the semi- toroidal shells is still rare. In this paper, we use the finite element method o f Part I (treated as a linearized eigenvalue problem but the finite prebuckling rotations and the follower force effect of the pressure are considered) to calculate the buckling of the semi-toroidal shells under uniform external pressure. The present results are compared with those of the available approximately analytical solutions. In addition to the critical loads and the corresponding modes, the prebuckling bending stress distributions are also provided, which is convenient for studying the details of the buckling problem.
Keywords: finite element analysis, buckling of toroidals hells, buckling of semi-toroidal shells, prebuckling stress distributions, critical loads, buckling modes.