THERMAL-STRESSES IN THICK LAMINATED COMPOSITE SHELLS

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.