3D-printing and cylinder buckling: challenges and opportunities

Cylinder buckling is notoriously sensitive to small geometric imperfections. This is an underlying motivation for the use of knock-down factors in the design process, especially in circumstances in which minimum weight is a key design goal, an approach well-established at NASA, for example. Not only does this provide challenges in the practical design of this commonly occurring structural load-bearing configuration, but also in the carefully controlled laboratory setting. The recent development of 3D-printing (additive manufacturing) provides an appealing experimental platform for conducting relatively high-fidelity experiments on the buckling of cylinders. However, in addition to geometric precision, there are a number of shortcomings with this approach, and this article seeks to describe the challenges and opportunities associated with the use of 3D-printing in cylinder buckling in general, and probing the robustness of equilibrium configurations in particular. This article is part of the theme issue 'Probing and dynamics of shock sensitive shells'.