The analysis of buckling, post-buckling behaviour and load carrying capacity of prismatic composite pole structures is conducted. The asymptotic expansion established by Byskov-Hutchinson is used in the second order approximation. The thin-walled tubular columns are simply supported at the ends and subject to the uniform compression. Several types of cross-sections with and without intermediate stiffeners are considered. The present paper is the continuation of a previous paper by the authors (1999) where the modal interaction of thin-walled composite beamcolumns was investigated.

The study is devoted to a parametric analysis of the stability and load carrying capacity of prismatic segment shells built of rectangular sections of cylindrical shells and subjected to compression. Segment shells (columns) with a constant crosssectional area (weight) have been analysed and all the results obtained have been compared with the results obtained for the cylindrical shell with a radius R and a thickness c; First, an influence of geometrical parameters of the cross-section of single-layer isotropic shells has been analysed and such profiles have been sought for which the load carrying capacity is significantly higher than in the case of the cylindrical shell. Then, for a selected shape of the shell (apart from higher load carrying capacity, this choice could be influenced by other factors such as, e.g. easiness of manufacturing), an effect of the arrangement and thickness of orthotropic layers of the shell (laminate) on the stability and load carrying capacity has been investigated. The analysis has shown that one can design a segment shell made of the same orthotropic material and characterised by higher resistance to buckling and load carrying capacity than a single-layer cylindrical orthotropic shell. The results are depicted in the form of plots.