ANALYSIS OF LAMINATED SHELL STRUCTURE USING PIECE-WISE RITZ PROCEDURE

A piece-wise Ritz direct method for the analysis of laminated shell structure is developed in order to obtain a precise and effective solution to laminated shell problems. The semi-analytic solution is constructed by the Ritz procedure in two distinct steps. Firstly, the laminated shell structure under consideration is divided into patches and represented by parametric surfaces which are connected on common boundaries of C° continuity. The trial functions of the Ritz procedure with parametric surface characteristics are constructed for the total energy functional and governing equations thereafter. Numerical examples are given and it is shown through comparisons that the present method is fairly accurate and adequate.