Electroelastic effects on local-global buckling of piezoelectric cylindrical shells with stepped thickness

The Hamiltonian system is utilized to establish an accurate buckling solution model for piezoelectric material cylindrical shells with stepped thickness. The critical loads and nonuniform buckling modes are obtained by finding the symplectic eigenvalues and eigensolutions of the Hamiltonian equation. The results show that the transition between local buckling and global buckling can be controlled by an applied voltage. These findings can provide a novel method to control the buckling deformation range and symmetry of cylindrical shells.