The composite laminated shafts have wide ranging applications in various mechanical devices that include cylindrical tubes used in the marine and automotive industries and centrifugal separators of helicopters.
Rotating laminated composite shafts are developed for the replacement of traditional metallic shafts. An efficient beam theory technique is required to analyse the changing behaviour of the rotating laminated composites. In recent times many of the beam theory techniques that have been proposed analysed the dynamics of the laminated shafts that are rotating in nature. The present paper presents a comprehensive review based on beam theory techniques that include Equivalent Modulus Beam Theory (EMBT), Simplified Homogenized Beam Theory (SHBT), Modified EMBT, Layer wise Beam Theory (LBT), Timoshenko beam theory (TMBT), Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and Shear Deformation Beam Theory (SDBT). From a review of these techniques, Layer wise Beam Theory (LBT), Timoshenko beam theory (TMBT) and Shear Deformation Beam Theory (SDBT) techniques have been proved to provide better performance than other beam theory techniques in terms of critical speed, accuracy, natural frequencies, and stiffness. Moreover, this paper makes a comparative analysis based on the technique used and their corresponding critical speeds.