Elasticity solutions for laminated orthotropic cylindrical shells subjected to localized longitudinal and circumferential moments

The purpose of this work is to present baseline elasticity solutions for laminated composite shells subjected to localized moments. For simply supported cross-ply cylindrical shells, the problem reduces to one of coupled ordinary differential equations which are solved in terms of Taylor's series. Results, in the form of tables and graphs, are presented for the cases of longitudinal and circumferential moments. These results would be very useful for judging the accuracy of approximate two-dimensional shell theories. They are used herein to study the errors of a shell theory based on the classical Love-Kirchhoff hypothesis.