A special-purpose, semianalytical solution method for determining the stress and
deformation fields in a thin, laminated-composite cylindrical shell with an elliptical
cutout is presented. The analysis includes the effects of cutout size, shape, and
orientation; nonuniform wall thickness; oval cross-sectional eccentricity; and
loading conditions. The loading conditions include uniform tension, uniform
torsion, and pure bending. The analysis approach is based on the principle
of stationary potential energy and uses Lagrange multipliers to relax the
kinematic admissibility requirements on the displacement representations through
the use of idealized elastic edge restraints. Specifying appropriate stiffness
values for the elastic extensional and rotational edge restraints (springs)
allows the imposition of the kinematic boundary conditions in an indirect
manner, which enables the use of a broader set of functions for representing the
displacement fields. Selected results of parametric studies are presented for
several geometric parameters that demonstrate that this analysis approach is
a powerful means for developing design criteria for laminated-composite
shells.