Buckling of axially-loaded, moderately-thick, cylindrical laminated shells

Abstract

A higher-order theory is developed (kinematic relations, constitutive relations, equilibrium equations and boundary conditions), which includes initial geometric imperfections and transverse shear effects, for a laminated cylindrical configuration, under the actions of lateral pressure, axial compression and torsion. Through the perturbation technique, buckling equations and boundary conditions are derived for a symmetric laminated configuration, for a higher-(third) order shear-deformation theory as well as for the cases of first-order shear-deformation theory and classical theory. Critical axially-compressive loads are computed for finite length cylinders for several stacking sequences, several radius-to-total-thickness ratios and length-to-radius ratios and for all the above three theories. The material that was employed in generating results was boron/epoxy.