ANALYSIS OF AXISYMMETRICAL SHELLS BY THE DIRECT STIFFNESS METHOD

Abstract

A method for the structural analysis of shells of revolution, composed of materials with orthotropic properties, is discussed. The development is based on the direct stiffness method. A truncated cone element is introduced to take advantage of symmetry. Derivations of the stiffness and stress matrices for the truncated cone element are given. Several examples are solved on the digital computing machine using a program that is based on the truncated cone element. The results are compared to other theoretical results, and the correlation is excellent. Extension of the technique to handle linear unsymmetric deformation and nonlinear symmetric deformation is discussed.