STATIC RESPONSE OF COMPOSITE CIRCULAR CYLINDRICAL-SHELLS STUDIED BY DIFFERENT THEORIES

A detailed study, on the static response of cross-ply laminated compos ite circular cylindrical shell of revolution and shell panel with vari ous support conditions, has been made using Levy type of solution and the classical shell theories of Flugge, Sanders, Love and Donnell in a n unified form. It has been shown that while developing a Levy type of solution using aforementioned theories, certain difficulty is encount ered for determining the particular integral in respect of Flugge, San ders and Love theories. This difficulty has been overcome by making us e of the membrane solution as a particular integral. A comparative stu dy has been carried out using the above shell theories for different g eometrical parameters, lamination schemes and support conditions. It h as been shown that Donnell theory predicts inaccurate results for cert ain lamination schemes, support conditions and geometrical parameters of the shell. It is suggested that, for developing shear deformation s hell theories, it would be better to use a more accurate shell theory like Flugge.