Nonlinear Stability of Sandwich Functionally Graded Cylindrical Shells with Stiffeners Under Axial Compression in Thermal Environment

The geometrically nonlinear response of sandwich functionally graded cylindrical shells reinforced by orthogonal and/or spiral stiffeners and subjected to axial compressive loads is investigated in this paper. Two types of sandwich functionally graded material models are considered. The formulations are based on the Donnell shell theory considering geometrical nonlinearity and Pasternak’s elastic foundation. The improved Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffener technique is used to account for the stiffener effects with both mechanical and thermal stresses. The results obtained indicate that the spiral stiffeners have significantly beneficial influences in comparison with orthogonal stiffeners on the nonlinear buckling behavior of shells. The relatively large effects of temperature change, geometrical and material parameters are also demonstrated in the numerical investigations.