Numercial analysis of free vibration of cross-ply thick laminated composited cylindrical shells by continuos element method

Abstract

This paper presents the vibration analysis of thick laminated composite cylindricaỉ shells by a new approach using the Continuous Element Method (CEM). Based on the analytical solutions for the defferential equations of thick composite cylindrica shell taking into account shear deflection effects, the dynamic transfer matrix is built from which natural frequencies are easily calculated. A Computer program is developed for performing numerical calculations and results from specific cases arc prcsented Numerical results of this work are compared with publislied analytical and Finite Element Method (FEM) results. Through different examples, advantages of CEM arc confirmed: reduced size of model, higher precision, reduced time of computation and larger range of studied frequencies.