Abstract

A new analytical method is presented for modeling and analysis of stepped cylindrical shells and cylindrical shells stiffened by circumferential rings. Through use of the distributed transfer functions of the structural systems, various static and dynamic problems of cylindrical shells are systematically formulated. With this transfer function formulation, the static and dynamic response, natural frequencies and mode shapes, and buckling loads of general stiffened cylindrical shells under arbitrary external excitations and boundary conditions can be determined in exact and closed form. The proposed method is illustrated on a Donnell–Mushtari shell and compared with the finite element method and other modeling techniques.

Introduction

Cylindrical shells are the basic element in many structures and machines and therefore have been extensively studied in the past; for instance, see Donnell (1933), Soedel (1981), Irie et al. (1984), Yamada et al. (1984), Sheinman and Weissman (1987), Koga (1988), Thangaratnam et al. (1990), Huang and Hsu (1992), Heyliger and Jilani (1993), Birman (1993), and Miyazaki and Hagihara (1993). The static and dynamic problems of cylindrical shells are often complicated by engineering design in which a cylindrical shell is composed of a finite number of serially connected shell segments and/or stiffened by circumferential rings. For such complex structural systems, numerical methods are usually adopted.