A Finite Annular Prism Method for the Bending Analysis of Nonhomogeneous Orthotropic Toroidal Shells

Abstract

Based on Reissner’s mixed variational theorem (RMVT) the authors develop a finite annular prism method (FAPM) for a three-dimensional (3D) bending analysis of nonhomogeneous orthotropic complete and incomplete toroidal shells subjected to either uniformly or trigonometrically distributed loads In this formulation the toroidal shell is divided into a number of finite annular prisms with quadrilateral cross-sections where trigonometric functions and serendipity polynomials are used to interpolate the circumferential direction and meridian-radial surface variations in the primary field variables of each individual prism respectively The material properties of the toroidal shell are considered to be nonhomogeneous orthotropic over the meridian-radial surface such that homogeneous isotropic toroidal shells laminated cross-ply toroidal shells and single- and bi-directional functionally graded toroidal shells can be included as special cases in this work Implementation of the current FAPMs shows that their solutions converge rapidly and the convergent FAPM solutions closely agree with the 3D elasticity solutions available in the literature

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chih-Ping Wu (Supervisor)