Impact response of composite cylinders

An analytical solution has been developed for the impact response of a simply supported anisotropic composite cylinder. The contact force was obtained from the compatibility condition between the elastic impactor and the cylinder, with a modified Hertzian law. The Hertzian contact force term introduces a slight nonlinearity in the variation of contact force amplitude with velocity of impact. The present analysis also incorporates the terms that arise in the expressions for stress resultants and stress couples due to the trapezoidal shape of an elemental section of a shell. These trapezoidal terms can cause significant effects on the strain response of thick shell elements if the composite layup is non-symmetric. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.