Elastic Buckling of Laminated Beams, Plates, and Cylindrical Shells

Abstract

In this chapter, we study the elastic buckling of thin-walled elastic laminated structures. As a preliminary, the simplest problems on stability of laminated beams and plates are considered in Sect. 3.1. Then, using the derived in Chapt. 2 governing equations based on the equivalent single-layer model, some classes of problem on the buckling of thin elastic laminated cylindrical shells under different loading (external pressure, axial compression and torsion) are considered. In Sect. 3.2, the buckling of a medium-length laminated cylindrical shell under external pressure is investigated. As the special case, using the asymptotic Tovstik’s method, the localized buckling modes of a thin non-circular cylindrical shell with an oblique edge are studied. The problems on buckling of axially compressed laminated cylinders are considered in Sect. 3.3; a cylindrical shell under action of non-uniform axial forces is also examined. Finally, Sect. 3.4 is devoted to stability of laminated shells under axial torsion. In all cases, the influence of boundary conditions and transverse shears on the critical values of the buckling load parameter is analyzed. To verify the applied equivalent single-layer model, the finite-element analysis is performed for some of problems. We also show that the application of smart materials (i.e., magnetorheological elastomers) for assembling sandwiches or multi-layered thin cylinders allows to increase significantly the total stiffness of a structure and the critical buckling load as well.