Postbuckling of angle-ply laminated cylindrical shells with meridional curvature

The influence of meridional curvature on the postbuckling behaviour of angle-ply laminated cylindrical shells subjected to external pressure, torsional load, axial compression and uniform temperature rise is investigated using the semi-analytical finite element approach. The nonlinear governing equations are solved using Newton–Raphson iterative technique coupled with the adaptive displacement control method. The presence of asymmetric perturbation in the form of a small magnitude load spatially proportional to the linear buckling mode shape is considered to trace the postbuckling path. The variation of ply-angle and ply-thickness along the meridional direction is considered. The results presented reveal that the imperfection sensitivity of the cylindrical shells having negative Gaussian curvature decreases with the increase in the magnitude of H/r0 ratio for all the loading cases considered. The imperfection sensitivity of the positive Gaussian curvature shells increases for external pressure, torsional and thermal loading cases, whereas it decreases for axial loading case with the increase in H/r0 ratio.