Local Imperfection Effects on Thermal Buckling Behavior of Composite Fiber Reinforced Truncated Conical Liner

Thermal buckling behavior of truncated conical liner reinforced by laminated composite is investigated in the presence of a general initial imperfection. For this purpose, the method of virtual work and first-order strain-deformation shell theory are employed to extract equilibrium equations. To this end, a finite element code is developed using the 3D 8-node shell element with six degrees of freedom as an analysis tool. Also, the variation of thickness in conical composite shell is considered. Several problems withc-c, s-s, c-f boundary conditions are solved using code to highlight the effect of imperfection size and position. In this way, the most effective imperfection at each boundary condition is determined.