Beam-Column and Tie-Bar Effects in Internally Pressurized Thin Arbitrarily Laminated Cantilever Cylindrical Shells

Abstract

An arbitrarily laminated, anisotropic cantilever cylindrical shell of finite length, under uniform internal pressure, is analyzed using kinematic relations under the framework of classical lamination theory. Extensive numerical results are presented for two model problems, pertaining to two-layer, asymmetrically laminated, anisotropic cantilever cylindrical shells, illustrating the influence of layer anisotropy and lamination sequence on the beam-column/tie-bar effects, which, in turn, severely affect the free-end displacements and other response quantities of interest. Furthermore, because the beam-column effect can cause severe wrinkling in a thin asymmetrically laminated cylindrical shell, the possibility of its elimination through composite tailoring (a combination of stacking sequence and fiber orientation angle in a constituent lamina) has also been explored. Finally, the effect of length-to-radius ratio is also numerically investigated. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.