Thermal post-buckling behaviour of laminated composite cylindrical/hyperboloid shallow shell panel using nonlinear finite element method

Post-buckling strength and the critical buckling load parameter of laminated composite cylindrical/hyperboloid shell panel subjected to uniform temperature field is investigated in this paper. The mathematical model is developed taking into account the full nonlinearity effect in stiffness matrices in Green–Lagrange sense based on the higher order shear deformation theory. Governing equations are derived by minimizing the total potential energy of the system. The panel is represented with the nonlinear finite element model. The system equations are solved by a direct iterative approach to find out the thermal post-buckling equilibrium path. Influence of different parameters such as lamination scheme, modular ratio, amplitude ratio, thickness ratio, curvature ratio, aspect ratio and various support conditions have been examined in details. The results are compared with those available in literature.