Theoretical and experimental analysis of the deformability of filament wound composite shells under axial compressive loading

The numerical and experimental stress¯strain analysis of the filament wound composite shells of revolution is presented. The computations are based on the refined theory of shells that allows for the transverse shear strain. The finite difference approximation was implemented to obtain the numerical solution of the problem. Parameters of the algorithm were determined from the computational experimentation. To verify the numerical procedure the parallel analysis was performed using the membrane theory of shells. The results of the mechanical tests performed on the composite shells loaded by axial compression are compared with the theoretical strain distributions over the shell length. Satisfactory agreement between the experimental data and the results of calculations demonstrated the viability and the accuracy of the proposed approach and model