Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shell Structures

Book excerpt: The title, “Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shell Structures. Differential al Geometry and Higher-order Theories” illustrates the theme treated and the prospective followed during the composition of the present work. The aim of this manuscript is to analyze the static and dynamic behavior of thick and moderately thick composite shells through the application of the Differential Quadrature (DQ) method. The book is divided into two volumes wherein the principal higher order structural theories are illustrated in detail and the mechanical behavior of doubly-curved structures are presented by several static and dynamic numerical applications. In particular, the first volume is mainly theoretical, whereas the second one is mainly related to the numerical DQ technique and its applications in the structural field. The starting point to analyze higher-order structural theories is given by the so-called Unified Formulation (UF), which allows to consider and study several kinematic models in a unified manner. Both the Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) and Layer-Wise (LW) approaches are presented. A particular attention is paid to composite materials, due to their increasing development and use in many engineering fields during the last years.