Most of the aircraft fuselage will have a near circular cross-section. This is done in order to resist the severe bending loads that usually arise in a non-circular fuselage. However a non circular fuselage can have better volumetric efficiency and is a more suitable option for large airliners than the conventional circular fuselage. Stability of such a structure is of crucial importance as lives of many will be at stake. The current study deals with linear elastic buckling analysis carried out on a partially cylindrical fuselage. The design considered is similar to the Multi-bubble concept and is referred to as a Multi-shell fuselage. Different fuselage configurations are considered and various iterations are carried out in order to study the effect of some crucial parameters on the critical buckling strength.

Keywords: Multi-Shell fuselage (MSF), Multi-bubble, Stability, Linear elastic buckling, Critical buckling strength.