Design and analysis of shell structures (Q1904035)

The purpose of this book is to make any practicing engineer and architect familiar with the analysis of shell structures, and this without much mathematics. The contents goes from the physical behaviors and designs of shells to their structural analysis, in a simple integrated fashion. After some descriptions and classifications, elementary engineering formulae for forces, stresses and strains are given for membrane and bending problems. The classical assumptions and current approximations are recalled and attention is drawn to discontinuities, concentrated loads or edge effects. Along a dozen of chapters, equilibrium equations are derived, and simple analytical engineering formulae for stress and strain are given in the isotropic linear elastic range, for classical cases of cylindrical shells, shells of revolution, with or without stiffeners, as well as for folded plates and containers with liquids. Many applications in more or less difficult cases are carefully described, all that with a number of sketches, schemes or tables. The case of shells with arbitrary geometries is approached, illustrated with an example of hyperbolic paraboloid shell. The last chapter is devoted to the buckling of shells, giving an insight into the topic using elementary formulae, with rather few explanations. The general concepts of elastic and geometrical stiffness terms are unfortunately omitted. A general methodology used in the book is to treat the membrane and bending problems as uncoupled ones, sometimes with corrective formulae and flexibility influence coefficients, owing, for instance, to particular edge or compatibility conditions. The general method is purely analytic, using the so-called force method, and deliberately ignoring modern methods of analysis like the finite element method. The reasoning remains simple, and in some chapters like the buckling one, it should be observed some lack of theoretical explanations. Truly speaking, in spite of many elementary discussions, as far as the choice was to avoid any appropriate mathematical development and any general theory, this aim becomes in this field of mechanics a real challenge which could let some readers be unsatisfied.