Thermal Buckling of Laminated Conical Shells Embedded with and without Piezoelectric Layer

In this paper the thermal buckling analysis of laminated conical shell/panel embedded with and without piezoelectric layer subjected to uniform temperature rise based on a higher-order shear deformation theory is studied using the finite element method. The longitudinal and circumferential components of the displacement field are given as a power series of the transverse coordinate and recast in such a manner that the conditions of zero transverse shear stresses are satisfied a priori. The displacement field is further modified in such a way that the displacements are C(0) confirming and the finite element is a panel with nodes having 56 degrees of freedom. The effect of stacking sequence, boundary condition, slant ratio and thickness ratio on the thermal buckling temperature has been examined. The buckling temperature increases as the semi-cone angle changes from 30 degrees to 60 degrees. The piezoelectric conical shell analysis shows an improvement in the buckling coefficient and it depends upon a fraction of piezoelectric material in the whole laminate. The results have been validated with those available in the literature.