Closed-form solutions for arbitrary laminated anisotropic cylindrical shells (tubes) including shear deformation

Abstract

Heretofore unavailable closed-form solutions are presented for arbitrarily laminated anisotropic cylindrical shells subjected to axially varying internal pressure. These solutions are obtained under the framework of the constant-shear-angle theory (CST) or the first-order shear-deformation theory (FSDT) for arbitrary boundary conditions. A unified CST-based shell theory, which is an extension of Love's first approximation theory or Love-Kirchhoff hypothesis, with four popular kinematic relations as special cases, has been employed into the formulation. The previously obtained CST-based solutions for symmetric/unsymmetric cross-ply and balancedunsymmetric/unbalanced-symmetric angle-ply cylindrical shells under the same loading conditions have been shown to be special cases of the present solution. The available solution based on the classical lamination theory (CLT) can be obtained from the present solution in the limiting case of the transverse shear rigidities approaching infinity. Numerical results have been presented for two-layer thick cylindrical shells (tubes) with SSl-type simply supported boundary conditions and have been compared with the corresponding CLT-based closed-form solutions and also the finite-element solutions based on the layerwise constant-shear-angle theory (LCST). These are expected to serve as benchmark solutions for future comparisons and to facilitate the employment of asymmetric lamination in design, known as composite tailoring.