Anti-symmetric angle-ply laminated thick cylindrical panels

Hither-to-fore an unavailable analytical solution (strong form or differential form) to the boundary-value problem of advanced fiber reinforced anti-symmetric angle-ply laminated cylindrical panels of rectangular planform subjected to static loadings is presented. A variationally consistent higher shell theory is utilized that generates five highly coupled fourth order partial differential equations in five unknowns, three displacements, and two rotations. A boundary continuous double Fourier series-based solution functions is assumed to solve such equations in conjunction with the admissible boundary conditions. The numerical results constitute the study of convergence of displacements, in-plane forces, and moments ; and spatial variations of them presented in the form of contour plotting for various parametric effects. These, hither-to unavailable solutions, and analytically obtained numerical results should serve as bench-marks for future comparisons of popular approximate methods (integral form or weak form), such as finite element, boundary element, finite difference, Galerkin approach, Rayleigh-Ritz, collocation, least-squares methods, and experimental results, etc. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.