Free vibrations of thick laminated anisotropic non-circular cylindrical shells

Here, the free vibration characteristics of thick laminated composite non-circular cylindrical shells are analyzed using higher-order theory. The formulation accounts for the variation of the in-plane and transverse displacements through the thickness, abrupt discontinuity in slope of the in-plane displacements at the interfaces, and includes in-plane, rotary inertia terms, and also the inertia contributions due to the coupling between the different order displacement terms. The accurate strain-displacement relations are used for the evaluation of strain energy. The governing equations are solved employing the finite element procedure. Detailed study is made to highlight the influences of length and thickness ratios, eccentricity parameters, ply-angles and number of layers on the free vibration characteristics of non-circular shells. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.