Within the framework of a 6-parameter nonlinear shell theory, with strain measures of Cosserat type, constitutive relations are proposed for thin elastic composite shells. The material law is expressed in terms of five engineering constants of classical anisotropic continuum plus an additional parameter accounting for drilling stiffness. The theory allows for unlimited displacements and rotations. A number of examples are presented...

Within the framework of the nonlinear 6-parameter shell theory with the drilling rotation and asymmetric stress measures, the modifications of Tsai-Wu and Hashin laminate failure initiation criteria are proposed. These improvements enable to perform first ply failure estimations taking into account the non-symmetric stress measures. In order to check the validity of the proposed criteria, finite element analyses are performed with...

Within the six-parameter nonlinear shell theory we analyzed the in-plane rotational instability which oc- curs under in-plane tensile loading. For plane deformations the considered shell model coincides up to notations with the geometrically nonlinear Cosserat continuum under plane stress conditions. So we con- sidered here both large translations and rotations. The constitutive relations contain some additional mi- cropolar parameters...