A Cylindrical Superelement for Thermo-Mechanical Analysis of Thin Composite Vessels

In this study, a new cylindrical shell superelement with trigonometric shape functions is developed. This element is formulated based on the classical theory of shells, and it is especially designed for coupled-field analysis of thin cylindrical vessels or tubes made of composite materials. As a case study, a thermo-mechanical analysis of a thin composite cylinder is conducted. By invoking to the uniform and non-uniform meshing, the deformation and the stress results are calculated and compared with the analytical solutions. At the end, the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed superelement is also depicted via comparison of the corresponding results with the ones which are calculated by means of shell elements and via a commercial software package.