Dynamic buckling tests of thin shells were performed in order to examine buckling characteristics of Nuclear Reactor Vessels under seismic shear loads. The primary objective is the investigation of the effect of the horizontal excitation frequency and of cyclic loading on load/displacement relations and buckling loads. First static buckling tests and static non-linear FEM analyses were executed in order to compare with dynamic analyses. The static FEM results agree with the experimental results for the load/displacement relations, the buckling loads and the number of shear waves. The dynamic tests give the same buckling load as the static one but the post-buckling behaviour is different: it depends on the excitation frequency. A simple oscillator model can explain this result.
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