Stress Distribution around Shell Openings

In this paper a numerical method to determine stress distribution around arbitrarily shaped openings in shells is outlined. For the application of this method, shell governing differential equations must first be written for an arbitrary orthogonal coordinate system. Later, this coordinate system is transformed into another coordiante system using a proper transformation function to treat any arbitrary opening shape. Then a numerical method is used to solve the resulting equations. Using the equations of shallow thin shell theory, the method is applied to a circular cylindrical shell with a circular hole along perimeter of which a unit moment is applied. The variations of stress resultants are given and they are compared with an available solution.