Free vibrations of composite laminated doubly-curved shells and panels of revolution with general elastic restraints

Abstract

A unified numerical analysis model is presented to solve the free vibration of composite laminated doubly-curved shells and panels of revolution with general elastic restraints by using the Fourier–Ritz method. The first-order shear deformation theory is adopted to conduct the analysis. The admissible function is acquired by using a modified Fourier series approach in which several auxiliary functions are added to a standard cosine Fourier series to eliminate all potential discontinuities of the displacement function and its derivatives at the edges. Furthermore, the general elastic restraint and kinematic compatibility and physical compatibility conditions are imitated by the boundary and coupling spring technique respectively when the composite laminated doubly-curved panels degenerate to the complete shells of revolution. Then, the desired results are solved by the variational operation. Large quantities of numerical examples are calculated about the free vibration of cross-ply and angle-ply composite laminated doubly-curved panels and shells with different geometric and material parameters. Through the sufficient conclusions obtained from the comparison, it can be seen that highly accurate solutions can be yielded with a little computational effort. To understand the influence of different boundary conditions, lamination schemes, material and geometrical parameters on the vibration characteristics, a series of parametric studies are carried out. Lastly, results for vibration of the composite laminated doubly-curved panels and shells subject to various kinds of boundary conditions and with different geometrical and material parameters are also presented firstly, which can provide the benchmark data for other studies conducted in the future.