Thermal buckling analysis of composite doubly‐curved shells with viscoelastic core

Abstract Composite sandwich double‐curved shells (CSDCS) have been extensively employed in the engineering domain of variable temperature environments; consequently, it becomes very significant and essential to present the thermal buckling characteristics of CSDCS to supply some valuable numerical results. The no‐linear strain–displacement relationship due to temperature variation has been taken into consideration based on the Von‐Karman non‐linear strain theory, and Hamilton's principle is adapted to derive the buckling differential equations of the CSDCS. The Navier method is employed to solve the eigenvalue problem for obtaining the critical buckling temperature. Finally, through studying the variation rule of thermal buckling temperature (CBT), several interesting findings on thermal buckling of the CSDCS are shown, as follows: As the h3/h1 rises, the CBTs of CSDCS first decrease then increase. With the increase of radius value, the CBTs of spherical shells decline, the CBTs of models (1,1) and (2,2) of hyperbolic paraboloidal shells are essentially unchanged, but the ones of models (1,2) and (2,1) decrease. As the h2 increases, the CBT progressively grows after the initial reduction. With the increase in aspect ratio, the CBTs for modes (1,1) and (2,1) of CSDCS gradually increase, and the ones of modes (1,2) and (2,2) shows an increase after an initial decrease. The CBTs of CSDCS gradually increase as the shear module of damping layer increases. Highlights Thermal buckling of composite doubly‐curved sandwich shells was studied. A solution was proposed to derive the buckling differential equations. The change rules of critical buckling temperature were obtained.