First-ply Strength of Thick Circular Cylindrical GRP Composite Shell subjected to Static External Pressure via Finite Element Simulation and Analytical Approaches

摘要

One-ply thick externally pressurized GFRP cylinders were analyzed using computational numerical simulation and analytical method. The main part of the work was to study the critical external pressure to avoid failure in the laminated shells by employing various phenomenological failure criteria. Comparison between ABAQUS FEM simulation results and analytical solutions using MATLAB programming codes proved high accuracy of the analytical approach. Various fiber angles stacking sequences were chosen for optimization analysis. The results did not show any increase in stability as the layer number increased. The results also showed high correlation with corresponding failure criteria. The analytical solutions gave higher accuracy as the number of plies and the total laminate thicknesses were reduced.