Marguerre shell type secant matrices for the postbuckling analysis of thin, shallow composite shells

The postbuckling behaviour of thin shells has fascinated researchers because the theoretical prediction and their experimental verification are often different. In reality, shell panels possess small imperfections and these can cause large reduction in static buckling strength. This is more relevant in thin laminated composite shells. To study the postbuckling behaviour of thin, imperfect laminated composite shells using finite elements, explicit incremental or secant matrices have been presented in this paper. These incremental matrices which are derived using Marguerre