Thin!walled cylinders of various constructions and wide uses as primary structural elements in simple and complex structural configurations. In recent years the increasing need for lightweight efficient structures has led the structural engineer to the field of structural optimization and simultaneously to the use of advanced composites The correct and effective use of advanced composite materials requires more complex analyses in order to achieve a good understanding of the response characteristics of the system to external causes[ Due to the complexity of the systems and lack of complete design based information any new design must be extensively evaluated experimentally until it achieves the necessary reliability performance and safety However the experimental evaluation of composite structures is costly and time consuming[ Consequently it is extremely useful if a full scale structure can be replaced by a similar small!scale model which is much easier to work with Furthermore a dramatic reduction in cost and time can be achieved if available experimental data of a specific structure can be used to predict the behavior of a group of similar systems The employment of similitude theory to establish similarity among structural systems can save considerable expense and time provided that the proper scaling laws are found and validated

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