Nonlinear Buckling of Composite Shells of Revolution

By adopting the energy method, a method of calculating the stability of the rotational composite shell is presented that takes into account the influence of nonlinear prebuckling deformations and stresses on the buckling of the shell. The relationships between the prebuckling deformations and strains are calculated by nonlinear Karman equations. The numerical method is used to calculate the energy of the whole system. The nonlinear equation is solved by combining the gradient method and the amended Newton iterative method. A computer program is also developed. Examples are given to demonstrate the accuracy of the method presented in this paper.