Static and transient responses of a thin cylindrical panel constrained from motion along its straight edges and simply supported along its curved edges are treated analytically. Independent of modulus, and for a range of geometric parameters, static deformation along the panel's circumference from a uniform radial pressure exhibits an indentation. This indentation does not appear in transient response of the panel from an impulse of short duration. Extensional boundary constraints strongly affect peak stress in static and transient response.Static response, buckling and frequency response of curved panels were treated extensively in the literature. Skvortsov et al. (1998) analyzed static response of a cylindrical panel adopting general shell, shallow shell and curved plate theories, as well as a nonlinear model with arbitrary generator shape. Skvortsov et al. (2000) treated static response and stability of an arbitrary singly curved sandwich panel with general boundary conditions based on the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory. Blevins (1981) adopted Sewall's approximate shallow shell formulation to consider a wide range of boundary conditions. Approximate solutions to free vibration, buckling and transient response of the panel were obtained by Sheinman and Reichman (1992) using the reduced bending stiffness method, and by Chun and Lam (1995) employing the Ritz method with the beam's eigenfunctions or simple admissible polynomials as trial functions. DeRosa and Franciosi (2000) adopted the differential quadrature method to determine the inextensional resonances of thin arcs. All analyses above are based on approximate solutions along the circumferential direction.Dynamic response of curved panels from a pulse of duration much longer than the panel's fundamental period has been the subject of recent investigations. Among these, Johnson et al. (1984) treated the response of an infinite panel or arc to an eccentric line load. Ramkumar and Thakar (1985) extended the analysis to laminated panels with finite length along the generator and neglected inplane and rotary inertias and shear deformation confining their analysis to quasi-static conditions. The effect of panel geometric imperfection on 0020-7683/$ -see front matter Ó