GEOMETRICALLY AND MATERIALLY NONLINEAR ANALYSIS FOR A COMPOSITE PRESSURE VESSEL

An incremental Total Lagrangian Formulation is implemented for the finite element analysis of laminated composite pressure vessel with consideration of the material and geometric nonlinearities. For large displacements/large rotations due to geometric nonlinearities, the incremental equations are derived using a quadratic approximation for the increment of the reference vectors in terms of the nodal rotation increments. This approach leads to a complete tangent stiffness matrix. For material nonlinearity, the analysis is performed by using the piecewise linear method, taking account of the nonlinear shear stress-strain relation. The results of numerical tests include the large deflection behavior of the selected composite shell problem. When compared with the previous analysis, tile results are in good agreement with them. As a practical example, filament wound pressure vessel is analyzed with consideration of the geometrically and materially nonlinearity. The numerical results agree fairly well with the existing experimental results.