Geometrically nonlinear analysis for some axially compressed laminated cylindrical panels

Mainly, this paper deals with cylindrical laminated panels, axially compressed under the constraint of four simply-supported edges.By imposing uniform increasing end-shortening to the two opposite circular edges, characteristic equilibrium paths have been obtained in correspondence to numerical evaluations with finite element models subject to geometric non linearity. A peculiar link among different branches of the total path, each of which is connected to a proper deformed configuration, is pointed out in the axial load/end-shortening space.Convergence problems and mesh sensibility are also examined.