Stability of Composite Cylindrical Shells with Noncoincident Directions of Layer Reinforcement and Coordinate Lines

The stability problem is solved for cylindrical shells made of a laminated composite whose directions of layer reinforcement are not aligned with coordinate axes of the shell midsurface. Each layer of the composite is modeled by an anisotropic material with one plane of symmetry. The resolving functions of the mixed variant of shell theory are approximated by trigonometric series satisfying boundary conditions. The stability of the shells under axial compression, external pressure, and torsion is investigated. A comparison with calculation data obtained within the framework of an orthotropic body model is carried out. It is shown that this model leads to considerably erroneous critical loads for some structures of the composites. __________ Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 651–662, September–October, 2005.