Effects of boundary conditions on frequencies of a multi-layered cylindrical shell

A formulation based on Love's first approximation theory and with beam functions used as axial modal functions in the Ritz procedure is used to study the effects of boundary conditions on the free vibration characteristics for a multi-layered cylindrical shell. Altogether, nine different boundary conditions are considered. Four of the boundary conditions are with ends having the same end conditions: clamped-clamped, free-free, simply supported-simple supported and sliding-sliding. The other five boundary conditions are with ends having different end conditions: clamped-free, clamped-simply supported, clamped-sliding, free-simply supported and free-sliding. Mode shapes for the fundamental frequencies for the nine boundary conditions are also presented. To validate the analysis, comparisons of frequency parameters with those from exact three-dimensional linear elasticity analysis, Flugge theory, higher order displacement analysis and shear deformation theory in the literature are made; very good agreement is achieved by using the present method with results available in the literature. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited