On the contact problem of elastic spherical shells with large deflections

This paper presents an analysis of the mechanical behavious of a thin elastic spherical shell contactcd with: (1) a rigid plate; and (2) another shell of the same size and material. The large deflection problem is treated as a series of small deflection problems. The method is simple and effective. A number of experiments were made, and the results show that the theoretical relationship between compressive load and displacement agrees well with experimental one.