Response of elliptical composite cylinders to internal pressure loading

The results from semianalytical predictions and experiments are used to study the response of composite cylinders with elliptical cross sections loaded with internal pressure, The results for ellipses are contrasted to the case of circular cylinders, The semianalytical approach is based on the methods of Marguerre, Rayleigh-Ritz, and Kantorovich, the radius of curvature and the displacements being approximated by expansions in harmonic series in the circumferential are-length coordinate, and the coefficients of the displacement series being unknown functions of x that are solved for using the finite-difference method, The experiments are described and results for a circular and an elliptical quasi-isotropic cylinder loaded to I atm internal pressure are compared with predictions. Correlations between the predictions and the experiments are, in general, quite good.