Buckling Stability of Adhesively Bonded Composite Conical Shells Under Both Axial Compressive and External Pressure Loads

Abstract

A mathematical model is developed for buckling stability of an adhesively bonded composite conical shell system consisting of carbon fiber in a polyimide (PI) matrix. The conical shell is modeled by two orthotropic layers bonded together with a PI adhesive. In-plane compressive and external surface pressure loads are applied. The adhesive layer is modeled by mechanical linear normal and shear springs. The Galerkin method is applied to analyze the buckling stability of the structure as an eigenvalue problem to give critical buckling loads and corresponding mode shapes. Parametric studies are performed to show effects of system parameters on buckling stability of the system.