Axisymmetric analysis of auxetic composite cylindrical shells with honeycomb core layer and variable thickness subjected to combined axial and non-uniform radial pressures

An analytical method is proposed to determine the displacements of a composite cylindrical shell with auxetic honeycomb core layer and variable thickness under combined axial, internal, and external pressures. The thickness and pressure profiles can be arbitrary continuous functions. The displacements are defined in the framework of the first-order shear deformation theory. The composite shell consists of three layers, in which the inner and outer layers are isotropic and the core layer is made of an auxetic honeycomb material. The constitutive equations obey the Hooke law. The equilibrium equations which are a system of coupled differential equations with variable coefficients are extracted by employing the virtual work principle, and they are solved using the matched asymptotic expansion method of the perturbation technique. The effects of different parameters such as the geometry, honeycomb structure parameters, different load profiles, and the thicknesses on the results are studied. The results are compared with the finite element method and some other references.