ABSTRACT
The buckling behavior of filament-wound laminated conical shell is investigated by consideration of the variation of the stiffness coefficients. Unlike the isotropic conical shells, in the case of composite laminated materials, the thickness and the material’s properties vary with the shell coordinates which ultimately result in coordinate dependence of the stiffness matrices (A, B, D). To date, all analyses of laminated conical shells have been undertaken using constant stiffness coefficients in the laminate constitutive relations, usually assuming nominal material properties taken from the mid-length of the cone. The main object of this study is to investigate the influence of the variation of the stiffness coefficients on the buckling behavior of laminated conical shells and to compare the exact buckling load solution and the buckling loads based on constant nominal stiffnesses taken from various cross sections of the cone.
