Abstract: In this paper, a theory of thick-walled shells is established by means of Hellinger-Reissner’s variational principle, with displacement and stress assumptions. The displacements are expanded into power series of the thickness coordinate. Only the first four and the first three terms are used for the displacements parallel and normal to the middle surface respectively. The normal extruding and transverse shear stresses are assumed to be cubic polynomials and to satisfy the boundary stress conditions on the outer and inner surfaces of the shell. The governing equations and boundary conditions are derived by means of variational principle. As an example, a thick-walled cylindrical shell is disscussed with the theory proposed. Furthermore, a photoelastic experiment has been carried out, and the results are in fair agreement with the computations.

Key words: thick-walled shell, cylindrical shell, normal extruding stress, variational principle, photoelastic experiment