Free Vibration Analysis of Circular Cylindrical Shells: Comparison of Different Shell Theories

Abstract

In order to study the free vib ration of simply supported circular cy lindrical shells, a semi-analytical p rocedure is discussed in detail. In this technique, beam function is used as an approximat ion for simp ly supported boundary conditions. A literature review reveals that beam functions are used extensively in predicting natural frequencies of shells. Since this method does not involve with boundary condition equations, there is no need to deal with intense calculations. Hence, it is important to check the accuracy of this approximate technique. So this method was applied to ten different shell theories: 1) Donnell-Mushtari, 2) Love-Timoshenko, 3) Arno ld-Warburton, 4) Houghton-Johns, 5) Flugge-Byrne-Lur'ye, 6) Reissner-Naghdi-Berry, 7) Sanders, 8) Vlasov, 9) Kennard-Simp lified and 10) Soedel. The appro ximate procedure was compared favorably with experimental results. Finally, variations and influences of length, radius and thickness were studied on amplitude ratios.