As a common pressure vessel, the pressure cabin is the core structural component to ensure the safety of internal equipment. The design and manufacture of the pressure shell structure are very important. Its strength and stability are the issues that need to be focused on [
1]. A rotary shell structure with high load-bearing efficiency has the advantage of good streamline. It is widely used in aviation, marine, and other engineering fields [
2]. The conical pressure shell, as one of the typical reverting pressure shells, is widely used in the tail section of marine submersibles and submarines, the main part of deep-sea workstations, aerospace return capsules, pressure vessels, and other structures [
3,
4,
5,
6].
Many parameters affect the buckling performance of conical shells. B.S. Golzan et al. [
7] studied the nonlinear response of truncated conical shells; shallow conical caps subjected to external uniform pressure are discussed when discharging liquids or wind loads. It is concluded that the buckling ability of shells depends on two main geometric ratios: the length-radius ratio (L/R) and the thickness-radius ratio (t/R). Sang-Rai Cho et al. [
8] studied experimental and numerical investigations on the ultimate strength of steel-welded, ring-stiffened conical shells under external hydrostatic pressure. By varying the basic geometry, such as the conical angle and stiffener size and spacing, the numerical results were in good agreement with the experimental results. In the actual situation, due to the needs of the engineering structure, it is necessary to design the opening structure on the pressure shell, such as the entrance door, the safety door, the observation window, and so on. Openings will lead to reduced strength, stability, and stress concentration. Therefore, it is inevitable to select the opening parameters of the pressure shell with openings and evaluate the strength. Wu et al. [
9] studied the interaction of opening diameter, reinforcing rib size, and the number of ribs on a conical shell under the opening. That is, when the radius of the opening increased, the closer the opening edge was to the rib, the more obvious the reinforcing effect of the rib on the opening was. M. Kathiresan [
10] experimentally and numerically studied the effects of different shapes, sizes, and numbers of lateral cutouts at various locations on the load-bearing capacity, buckling behavior, and energy absorption characteristics of aluminum cones under a quasi-static axial load. The results showed that, regardless of the shape, size, and number of notches, changing the notch’s position from the middle height to three-quarters of the bottom resulted in a reduction in bearing capacity. The energy absorption characteristics of a conical truncated cone with a circular incision are better than those of a conical truncated cone with square or trapezoidal incisions at the same position. Hubert Debski [
11] et al. studied the impact of eccentric loads on the buckling characteristics of composite materials, causing structural load-bearing capacity loss, and investigated the effects of laminated and cross-sectional shapes on the buckling load, post-buckling equilibrium path, and failure load of compressed structures. Research has shown that composite structures can operate in a post-buckling state, and the eccentric compression load parallel to the test profile has a negative impact on their stability and load-bearing capacity. The increase in buckling load will reduce the compression of the profile web. P. Rozylo [
12] analyzed the failure phenomenon of axially compressed thin-walled composite structures with channel shapes and analyzed the failure phenomenon of axially compressed thin-walled composite structures with channel shapes. At present, the research on the complete conical shell shows that the buckling performance of the cone shell mainly depends on factors such as the length-diameter ratio, diameter-thickness ratio, and cone angle. Regarding the conical shell of the open hole, there is a study of the shape of the open hole, and there is a study of rib strengthening for the open hole conical shell. All of them are relatively innovative research ideas that provide certain reference opinions for other articles.
At present, most of the studies focus on small openings and strengthening the wall orthogonal to the openings, and the main research object is the buckling characteristics analysis of complete conical shells and ribbed conical shells, ignoring the influence of the inclined wall on the bearing capacity of the conical shell. At the same time, the influence of large openings and opening positions is also rare. The main focus of this article is on the analysis of the mechanical characteristics of reinforced conical shells with openings, and the impact of the angle of inclination of the reinforced wall on the nonlinear buckling of conical shells is mainly analyzed, which is the main novelty in relation to the current works in the literature on the subject. In this paper, ten stainless steel open-reinforcement conical shells with different opening positions and inclined angles of the wall were fabricated. The thickness test and three-dimensional scanning of the geometric shape were carried out. The buckling performance analysis was carried out using finite element numerical analysis and a hydrostatic pressure experiment. Then, the finite element calculation was carried out in detail based on different inclined angles and opening positions of the reinforcing wall, and its influence on the mechanical properties of the conical shell was analyzed.