Critical strain for a locally elliptical delamination near the surface of a cylindrical laminated shell under hydrothermal effects

An analytical method is presented to investigate hydrothermal effects on locally buckling for an elliptical delamination near the surface of cylindrical laminated shells. The critical strain of non-linear buckling for a locally elliptic delamination of cylindrical laminated shells is obtained by considering transverse displacements of the elliptically sub-laminated shells. The stacking sequence of sub-laminated shells may be multilayer and asymmetric. The geometrical axis of sub-laminated shells may be arbitrary. The Youngʹs modulus and the thermal and humidity expansion coefficients of the material are considered as functions of temperature change in base-laminated shells. The critical strains of locally buckling for cylindrical laminated shells subjected to hydrothermal effects are extracted for different stacking sequences, and different radii of base-laminated shells, by applying Rayleigh–Ritz method based on second variation of potential energy. From results carried out, it is found that the critical strain from the non-linear buckling for a locally elliptic delamination near the surface of a cylindrical laminated shell presents a lower value than that from linear considerations.