EFFECT OF AXIAL LOAD ON CASING COLLAPSE.

A unified treatment is presented of the effect of axial load on casing collapse wherein no a priori assumptions regarding the failure mode of the casing need be made. Rather, the specific mode of failure (elastic buckling, plastic buckling, ultimate strength failure) appears as a natural consequence of the analysis. The study of casing collapse presented herein is based on an analysis of an infinitely long, thin cylindrical shell. Guidelines concerning the degree of error to be anticipated due to the thin shell are included. The two major sections of this work are devoted to (1) an introduction to the governing equations, followed by a discussion of their relation to expressions used by previous authors, and (2) comparison of the derived expressions with experimental data.