On Bending Response of Doubly Curved Laminated Composite Shells Using Hybrid Refined Models

This paper presents a static analysis of laminated composite doublycurved shells using refined kinematic models with polynomial and nonpolynomial functions recently introduced in the literature. To be specific, Maclaurin, trigonometric, exponential and zigzag functions are employed. The employed refined models are based on the equivalent single layer theories. A simply supported shell is subjected to different mechanical loads, specifically: bisinusoidal, uniform, patch, hydrostatic pressure and point load. The governing equations are derived from the Principle of Virtual displacement and solved via NavierType closed form solutions. The results are compared with results from Layerwise solutions and different higher order shear deformation theories available. It is shown that refined models with nonpolynomial terms are able to accurately predict the throughthethickness displacement and stress distributions maintaining less computational effort compared to a Layerwise models.