Vibration analysis of circular cylindrical double-shell structures under general coupling and end boundary conditions

Abstract In this paper, the free and forced vibration analysis of circular cylindrical double-shell structures under arbitrary boundary conditions is presented. This is achieved by employing the improved Fourier series method based on Hamilton’s principle. In the formulation, each displacement component of the cylindrical shells and annular plates is invariantly expanded as the superposition of a standard Fourier series with several supplementary functions introduced to remove the potential discontinuities of the original displacement and its derives at the boundaries. With the introduction of four sets of boundary springs at the coupling interfaces and end boundaries of the shell–plate combination, both elastic and rigid coupling and end boundary conditions can be easily obtained by assigning the stiffnesses of the artificial springs to certain values. The natural frequencies and mode shapes of the structures as well as frequency responses under forced vibration are obtained with the Rayleigh–Ritz procedure. The convergence of the method is validated by comparing the present results with those obtained by the finite element method. Several numerical results including natural frequencies and mode shapes are presented to demonstrate the excellent accuracy and reliability of the current method. Finally, a number of parameter studies concerning various end and coupling boundary conditions, different dimensions of shells and annular plates are also performed.