Local Buckling of Composite Laminated Cylindrical Shells with Oblique Edges under External Pressure

Asymptotic and Finite Element Simulations

Abstract

The problem of local buckling ofa thin composite laminated cylindrical shell under external pressure is studied. Each layer of the shell is assumed to be isotropic. The special case of the shell being non-circular and/or having no plane edges is considered here. Presupposing that buckling takes place in the neighborhood of some so-called “weakest” generator, the asymptotic Tovstik’s method is appliedfinding the critical pressure and the elgenmodes. As an example, buckling of a three-layered circular thin cylinder with a sloped edge is investigated. Besides the asymptotic approach the finite element simulation is applied to facilitate the estimation of the range to which the results obtained can be applied.