Postbuckling of shear deformable stiffened anisotropic laminated cylindrical shell under axial compression

A postbuckling analysis is presented for a shear deformable anisotropic laminated cylindrical shell with stiffener of finite length subjected to axial compression. The material of each layer of the shell is assumed to be linearly elastic, anisotropic and fiber-reinforced. The governing equations are based on a higher order shear deformation shell theory with von Kármán-Donnell-type of kinematic nonlinearity and including the extension/twist, extension/flexural and flexural/twist couplings. The ‘smeared stiffener’ approach is adopted for the beam stiffeners. This arrangement allows the beam stiffeners to be assembled directly into the global stiffness matrix. The nonlinear prebuckling deformations and initial geometric imperfections of the shell are both taken into account. A singular perturbation technique is employed to determine the buckling loads and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical illustrations concern the postbuckling response of perfect and imperfect, grid, axial, ring stiffened, and unstiffened shells. The results confirm that there exists a compressive stress along with an associate shear stress and twisting when the anisotropic shell is subjected to axial compression. The postbuckling equilibrium path is unstable for the moderately thick cylindrical shell under axial compression and the stiffened shell structure is imperfection-sensitive.