Static Response of Composite Circular Cylindrical Shells Studied by Different Theories

A detailed study, on the static response of cross-ply laminated composite circular cylindrical shell of evolution and shell panel with various support conditions, has been made using Levy type of solution and the classical shell theories of Flugge, Sanders, Love and Donnell in an unified form. It has been shown that while developing a Levy type of solution using aforementioned theories, certain difficulty is encountered for determining the particular integral in respect of Flugge, Sanders and Love theories. This difficulty has been overcome by making use of the membrane solution as a particular integral. A comparative study has been carried out using the above shell theories for different geometrical parameters, lamination schemes and support conditions. It has been shown that Donnell theory predicts inaccurate results for certain lamination schemes, support conditions and geometrical parameters of the shell. It is suggested that, for developing shear deformation shell theories, it would be better to use a more accurate shell theory like Flugge