The design of conical roofs usually does not require high technology. Design is based on a uniformly distributed load acting on a cone with forces resolved to calculate periferal and hoop stress. Provided compression stresses are kept to reasonable values plate buckling is not a problem.
Small local loads are not likely to cause global collapse, and can be handled with reinforcing plates. Openings can be handled on an equivalent area basis.
1. - Treat your opening as a nozzle. Take a section through the nozzle and from three points calculate an average circle of curviture.
2. - Treat the nozzle as if it were on the side of a cylinder of the diameter just calculated. Use any pressure vessel text book for nozzle stresses.
3. - Because of the taper of the cone a horizontal section at the top of the nozzle will be shorter than one at the bottom. As a result local stresses at the top will be more concentrated than at the bottom. Use the ratio between top and bottom dimensions to give an approximate stress concentration factor.
4. - If you think in terms of plastic design, or yield line principles the plate will buckle in a series of diamond shaped areas. You can be quite crude in mathematical refinement and still come up with meaningful results.
5. - If you are working with large concentrated loads, or are worried about deflections, then analyse a 3-dimensional wire frame model, or use FEA. FEA was invented because the mathematics of some of these problems can get ridiculously complicated. [sig][/sig]