In this study, composite laminated conical shells with ring stiffeners are analyzed. A versatile 4-node shell element which is useful for the analysis of conical shell structures is used. An improved flat shell element is established by the combined use of the addition of non-conforming displacement modes and the substitute shear strain fields. The proposed element has six degrees of freedom per node and permits an easy connection to other types(beam element) of Optimum location and optimum section properties of ring stiffeners are obtained. It is shown that the thickness of conical shell is reduced about 20% by optimum ring stiffeners.