Thermal post-buckled behaviors of cylindrical composite shells with viscoelastic damping treatments

The finite element method for the vibration and damping analyses of the thermal post-buckled cylindrical composite shells with damping treatments was developed adopting the layerwise displacement field theory. The arc-length method was used to trace the nonlinear post-buckling behavior of the composite shell induced by the thermal load, and the complex modulus was adopted to consider the effects of the structural damping. The verification of the present results was performed in comparison with previous results, and the dynamic characteristics of several composite shells with damping treatments were investigated. The results show that the viscoelastic damping treatments could significantly affect the thermal post-buckling behaviors and the dynamic characteristics of the composite shells.