Ashwini A Kota, U R Awari and Priti R Satarkar
Civil and structural engineers have always preferred conoidal configuration, which is a ruled and aesthetically pleasant shape. The introduction of laminated composite as the structural material has provided the impetus to explore the different behavioural aspects of composite conoids. But the variation of curvature is the major difficulty encountered in the analysis of these shells. Keeping above point in mind, a finite element analysis is carried out using an eight noded isoparametric element with five degrees of freedom per node together with Sanders’ strain displacement relationships. Benchmark problems are solved to validate the present approach and a wide variety of composite conoidal shell problems with cross ply laminates are solved by varying aspect ratio and degree of truncation for different the stacking sequence and clamped boundary condition under uniformly distributed pressure. Results are presented for truncated and full conoid and a set of conclusions are arrived at based on a parametric study.