Paulettea, assuming of course you mean
general primary bending stress, another case is: if, in calculating a flat head, you assume it to be totally or partly clamped to the shell, then you'll have a general primary bending stress in the shell too.
And I don't clearly understand you when you say
there will be some secondary bending stress due to straining of the flat head in order to reach some curvature
Do you agree that a purely hinged flat head will only have (general) primary bending stresses? IMHO there are two cases: if
you calculate the primary bending stress as if the flat head was purely hinged (often primary stresses are calculated by formula), then all other bending stresses due to the restraint at the periphery will be secondary,
but if you calculate the bending with a model of the actual boundary restraint, then you'll have to classify the bending at the periphery as primary general.
This shows that the stress classification is not carved in the stone, in other words is not purely objective, it is instead partly subjective, as it depends on how
you build your classification model.
Also, as another example of difficult classification, the fraction of the bending stress in a flat head (even if purely hinged), that is caused by a non zero Poisson's ratio, should be classified as secondary, as it is deformation related. However this is not very important, as that fraction of stress is generally low.
These examples show indeed that the primary bending stress is not 'very easy to understand', but you'll be able to sort it out in the end
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