The bending of composite shallow revolutional shells

Abstract

This paper deals with the bending problem of composite revolutional shells under the action of distributed loading using a new approach, the non-orthogonal series method, i.e. NOSM. The formulation is based on the thin shell theory of small strains. The basic equations are developed and can be expressed in matrix form for composite revolutional shells. In general, because of the anisotropic characteristics, there will be a coupling effect in the boundary conditions, even including the axisymmetrical bending case. The non-orthogonal function series adopted showed very significant coupling effects in such anisotropic and orthotropic revolutional shells. Finally, a composite shallow spherical shell was investigated and the results show that the coupling effect at the boundary conditions makes the maximum displacement smaller than in the case of no coupling.