The paper provides an analytical formulation to investigate the thermo
-mechanical behavior of thick composite shells subjected to a temperat
ure distribution which varies arbitrarily in the radial direction. For
illustrative purposes, shells under uniform temperature change are pr
esented. It is found that thermal twist would occur even for symmetric
laminated shells. Under uniform temperature rise, results for off-axi
s graphite/epoxy shells show that extensional-shear coupling can cause
tensile radial stress throughout the shell and tensile hoop stress in
the inner region. Laminated graphite/epoxy shells can exhibit negativ
e effective thermal expansion coefficients in the longitudinal and tra
nsverse directions. Finally, the stacking sequence has a strong influe
nce on the thermal stress distributions.