Abstract
A cantilever-supported shell that is cut out from a circular cylinder is investigated. It is found that the shell with the specified boundary shape has a membrane stress field, which is obtained by solving analytically the differential equations. In order to confirm the results, typical examples are solved numerically using FEM based on Galerkin type weak form. Then, the effect of the plate bending neglected by membrane theory is investigated. Furthermore, it is verified that the influence caused by difference between the idealized boundary condition of the membrane theory and the exact fixed boundary condition of FEM is very small. Therefore, this shell is said mostly in membrane stress state, and has shell-like advantage on shape, space and ecomomy.
