Buckling Analysis of Ring-Stiffened Laminated Composite Cylindrical Shells by Fourier-Expansion Based Differential Quadrature Method

This article focuses on the application of the Fourier-expansion based differential quadrature method (FDQM) for the buckling analysis of ring-stiffened composite laminated cylindrical shells. Displacements and rotations are expressed in terms of Fourier series expansions in longitudinal direction and their first order derivatives are approximated with FDQM in circumferential direction. The 'smeared stiffener' approach is adopted for the stiffeners modeling. Two FORTRAN programs prepared for linear and nonlinear analysis and results were compared by ABAQUS finite element software. Buckling loads of stiffened and unstiffened shells considering the effects of changes in shell and stiffener geometric and material properties and also shell lay-ups are investigated.