Ring Stiffened Cylindrical Shell Structures: State-of-the-Art Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper briefly reviews the development of shell stability theory, then presents an overview of the current status and trends of stability research on the stiffened cylindrical shell widely used in cylindrical shell structures in real engineering, and finally presents the difficulties and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications. The piece of work appears to be very impressive. However, it is suggested that few corrections be made before accepting the manuscript for publication. Should the authors be willing to revise the manuscript, the following revision should be considered.

(1) The introduction is not structurally incomplete. The introduction should include conclusion part.

(2) Some symbols appearing in the figures have not been defined and clearly descripted, such as P_Bif and P_lim in fig.3.

(3) In the section 2 (Line 74), “purposes,” should be deleted.

(4) Was it too full of content in section 3? It is suggested that Section 3 consists of several sections for discussion.

(5) I suggest the authors rewrite the Conclusions since the organization is not clear. It is recommended that Conclusions should consist of a few paragraphs.

Author Response

Dear Editor, dear Reviewer,

thank you for your letter dated 07/11/2022. We thank the reviewers for the time and effort that they have put into reviewing the previous version of the manuscript. Their suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript.

Appended to this letter is our point-by-point response to the comments raised by the reviewers. The comments are reproduced, and our responses are given directly afterward. We acknowledge the reviewer’s comments and suggestions very much, which were valuable in improving the quality of our manuscript.

We are looking forward to hearing from your final comments.

Kind regards,

Hartmut Pasternak, Zheng Li, Algirdas Juozapaitis and Alfonsas Daniūnas

Reviewer #1: This paper briefly reviews the development of shell stability theory, then presents an overview of the current status and trends of stability research on the stiffened cylindrical shell widely used in cylindrical shell structures in real engineering, and finally presents the difficulties and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications. The piece of work appears to be very impressive. However, it is suggested that few corrections be made before accepting the manuscript for publication. Should the authors be willing to revise the manuscript, the following revision should be considered.

(1)                 The introduction is not structurally incomplete. The introduction should include conclusion part.

A1: According to the reviewer’s comment, we have carefully modified the corresponding text and added conclusion part.

(2) Some symbols appearing in the figures have not been defined and clearly descripted, such as PBif and Plim in fig.3.

A2: Done

(3) In the section 2 (Line 74), “purposes,” should be deleted.

A3: Done

(4) Was it too full of content in section 3? It is suggested that Section 3 consists of several sections for discussion.

A4: Indeed, we split it into several subparagraphs in the revised manuscript.

(5) I suggest the authors rewrite the Conclusions since the organization is not clear. It is recommended that Conclusions should consist of a few paragraphs.

A5: We accept the reviewer’s suggestion, and modified.

Reviewer 2 Report

The current status and trends of stability research on stiffened cylindrical shell structures were reviewed, with an overview of the development of shell stability theory being performed. Also, the challenges and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications were analyzed. Overall, the research topic of this manuscript is attractive and practical. However, the following comments should be addressed before a final decision is made:

1. The novelty and contribution of this manuscript should be highlighted. For example, authors mainly review the current situation and development trend of the research on the stability of stiffened cylindrical shells, but have any similar review articles been published? Also, it is suggested to emphasize the framework and contribution of this manuscript in the last paragraph of the introduction.

2. The quality of the figures in the manuscript should be greatly improved, e.g., the font of flowcharts 5, 8, 9 and 10 is unclear. In addition, the units of the coordinates in Fig. 3 should be provided.

3. It is suggested to add some analytical derivations of the shell stability theory, especially to emphasize the differences between them, which will help to increase the depth of the article.

4. The state of the art on the matter could be conveniently enriched by referencing recent contributions on vibration behaviors of shell structures, and some of the following literature related to the topic of this manuscript should be appropriately cited.

(1) Investigation of vibration suppression performance of composite pyramidal truss sandwich cylindrical shell panels with damping coating [J]. Thin-Walled Structures, 2022: 109980.

(2) Nonlinear free vibration of functionally graded fiber-reinforced composite hexagon honeycomb sandwich cylindrical shells [J]. Engineering Structures, 2022: 114372.

(3) Modeling and evaluation of dynamic degradation behaviours of carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy composite shells. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2022, 104, 21-33.

(4) Nonlinear forced vibration of hybrid fiber/graphene nanoplatelets/polymer composite sandwich cylindrical shells with hexagon honeycomb core. Nonlinear Dynamics, 2022.

(5) Thermal-vibration aging of fiber-reinforced polymer cylindrical shells with polyurea coating: Theoretical and experimental studies. Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, 2022.

(6)  Analytical modelling and vibration analysis of fiber reinforced composite hexagon honeycomb sandwich cylindrical-spherical combined shells. Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (English Edition). 2022, 43: 1307-1322.

(7) Nonlinear vibration characteristics of fibre reinforced composite cylindrical shells in thermal environment, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 2021, 156, 107665.

5. The advantages and disadvantages of various kinds of shell stability theories, as well as the scope of application should be added.

6. The challenges and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications summarized by the authors are not clear. It is recommended that the authors strengthen this aspect and provide potential solutions if possible.

7. The conclusion part of the manuscript needs to be improved to highlight the focus and findings.

8. Some typos, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes still exist in the manuscript. The whole paper should be rechecked carefully. For example, the sentence “For structural design purposes, purposes,”. (Line 74); the sentence “post-buckling properties of the stiffened and unstiffened shell structure have been presented.” (Line 326); 

Author Response

Dear Editor, dear Reviewer,

thank you for your letter dated 07/11/2022. We thank the reviewers for the time and effort that they have put into reviewing the previous version of the manuscript. Their suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript.

Appended to this letter is our point-by-point response to the comments raised by the reviewers. The comments are reproduced, and our responses are given directly afterward. We acknowledge the reviewer’s comments and suggestions very much, which were valuable in improving the quality of our manuscript.

We are looking forward to hearing from your final comments.

Kind regards,

Hartmut Pasternak, Zheng Li, Algirdas Juozapaitis and Alfonsas Daniūnas

Reviewer #2: The current status and trends of stability research on stiffened cylindrical shell structures were reviewed, with an overview of the development of shell stability theory being performed. Also, the challenges and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications were analyzed. Overall, the research topic of this manuscript is attractive and practical. However, the following comments should be addressed before a final decision is made:

1. The novelty and contribution of this manuscript should be highlighted. For example, authors mainly review the current situation and development trend of the research on the stability of stiffened cylindrical shells, but have any similar review articles been published? Also, it is suggested to emphasize the framework and contribution of this manuscript in the last paragraph of the introduction.

A1: Already done.

2. The quality of the figures in the manuscript should be greatly improved, e.g., the font of flowcharts 5, 8, 9 and 10 is unclear. In addition, the units of the coordinates in Fig. 3 should be provided.

A2: Done.

3. It is suggested to add some analytical derivations of the shell stability theory, especially to emphasize the differences between them, which will help to increase the depth of the article.

A3: Thank you for your valuable advice. But it is “only” a state-of-art review.

4. The state of the art on the matter could be conveniently enriched by referencing recent contributions on vibration behaviors of shell structures, and some of the following literature related to the topic of this manuscript should be appropriately cited.

A4: Modified the corresponding text and [1]-[3] were cited.

(1) Investigation of vibration suppression performance of composite pyramidal truss sandwich cylindrical shell panels with damping coating [J]. Thin-Walled Structures, 2022: 109980.

(2) Nonlinear free vibration of functionally graded fiber-reinforced composite hexagon honeycomb sandwich cylindrical shells [J]. Engineering Structures, 2022: 114372.

(3) Modeling and evaluation of dynamic degradation behaviours of carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy composite shells. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2022, 104, 21-33.

(4) Nonlinear forced vibration of hybrid fibre/graphene nanoplatelets/polymer composite sandwich cylindrical shells with hexagon honeycomb core. Nonlinear Dynamics, 2022.

(5) Thermal-vibration aging of fibre-reinforced polymer cylindrical shells with polyurea coating: Theoretical and experimental studies. Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, 2022.

(6)  Analytical modelling and vibration analysis of fiber reinforced composite hexagon honeycomb sandwich cylindrical-spherical combined shells. Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (English Edition). 2022, 43: 1307-1322.

(7) Nonlinear vibration characteristics of fiber reinforced composite cylindrical shells in thermal environment, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 2021, 156, 107665.

5. The advantages and disadvantages of various kinds of shell stability theories, as well as the scope of application should be added.

A5: As the reviewer’s comment pointed out, shell stability theories are various, and they each have their scope of application. However, in this paper, we mainly discuss the ring stiffened cylindrical shell structures. So, we discuss the various mechanics of ring stiffened cylindrical shells and their advantages and disadvantages in section 3.2.

6. The challenges and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications summarized by the authors are not clear. It is recommended that the authors strengthen this aspect and provide potential solutions if possible.

A6: Modified the corresponding text in section 3.3.

7. The conclusion part of the manuscript needs to be improved to highlight the focus and findings.

A7: We accept the reviewer’s suggestion and have rewritten it.

8. Some typos, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes still exist in the manuscript. The whole paper should be rechecked carefully. For example, the sentence “For structural design purposes, purposes,”. (Line 74); the sentence “post-buckling properties of the stiffened and unstiffened shell structure have been presented.” (Line 326);

A8: Done