On the prediction of interlaminar shear stresses in a thick laminated general shell

Abstract

A post-processing semi-analytical approach, for prediction of the interlaminar shear stress distribution through the thickness of an arbitrarily laminated general shell, is presented. The starting point of the approach is an assumed displacement finite element analysis, based on the assumptions of transverse inextensibility and layerwise constant shear-angle theory (LCST). First, the problem is posed in the context of Taylor series expansions of the interlaminar shear stresses in terms of the thickness coordinate, dictated by the LCST assumption and the shell curvature. An “exact” (in the context of the problem thus posed) and three progressively approximate semi-analytical methods for prediction of interlaminar shear stresses are then presented. The throughthickness distribution of interlaminar shear stresses in an arbitrarily laminated thick plate can be obtained as a special case of the present solution. Numerical results are presented for two-layer thin and thick tubes with simply-supported edges, using the Cartesian-like local Riemann coordinate (CLRC) approximation and are compared to the corresponding analytical solutions, based on the classical lamination theory (CLT). Results for thin laminated tubes prove the accuracy of the present approach, while hitherto unavailable results for a thick laminated tube are expected to serve as baseline solutions for future comparisons.