THE STABILITY OF COMPOSITE-MATERIAL STIFFENED CONICAL SHELLS UNDER AXIAL-COMPRESSION

The stability of composite material stiffened conical shells under uni form axial compression and with classical clamped boundary conditions is investigated. The effects of stiffeners are uniformly distributed o ver the whole surface of the shell, and the shell is treated as an equ ivalent orthotropic shell. A method of solution is developed by using energy principles and Rayleigh-Rize approximations. It is shown that t he approach proposed in this paper is practical, effective and satisfa ctory. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.