Elasticity solution and free vibrations analysis of laminated anisotropic cylindrical shells

Dynamic response of axisymmetric arbitrary laminated composite cylindrical shell of finite length, using three-dimensional elasticity equations are studied. The shell is simply supported at both ends. The highly coupled partial differential equations are reduced to ordinary differential equations (ODE) with variable coefficients by means of trigonometric function expansion in axial direction. For cylindrical shell under dynamic load, the resulting differential equations are solved by Galerkin finite element method, In this solution, the continuity conditions between any two layer is satisfied. It is found that the difference between elasticity solution (ES) and higher order shear deformation theory (HSD) become higher for a symmetric laminations than their unsymmetric counterpart. That is due to the effect of bending-streching coupling. It is also found that due to the discontinuity of inplane stresses at the interface of the laminate, the slope of transverse normal and shear stresses aren't continuous across the interface. For free vibration analysis, through dividing each layer into thin laminas, the variable coefficients in ODE become constants and the resulting equations can be solved exactly. It is shown that the natural frequency of symmetric angle-ply are generally higher than their antisymmetric counterpart. Also the results are in good agreement with similar results found in literatures.