Buckling and stability of elastic-plastic sandwich conical shells

Shell structures are very interesting from the design point of view and these are well recognized in the scientific literature. In this paper the analysis of the buckling loads and stability paths of a sandwich conical shell with unsymmetrical faces under combined load based on the assumptions of moderately large deflections (geometrically nonlinear theory) is considered and elastic-plastic properties of the material of the faces are taken into considerations. External load is assumed to be two-parametrical one and it is assumed that the shell deforms into the plastic range before buckling. Constitutive relations in the analysis are those of the Nadai-Hencky deformation theory of plasticity and Prandtl-Reuss plastic flow theory with the H-M-H (Huber-Mises-Hencky) yield condition. The governing stability equations are obtained by strain energy approach and Ritz method is used to solve the equations with the help of analytical-numerical methods using computer.