Free vibration characteristic of laminated conical shells based on higher-order shear deformation theory

The purpose of this research is to analyse the free vibration of composite laminated conical shells based on higher order shear deformation theory. The vibrational behavior of multi-layered conical shells are analyzed for simply supported end condition. The coupled differential equations in terms displacement and rotational functions are obtained. These displacement and rotational functions are invariantly approximated using cubic and quantic spline. A generalized eigenvalue problem is obtained and solved numerically for an eigenfrequency parameter and an associated eigenvector of spline coefficients. The different materials are used to show the parametric effects of shell's length ratio, cone angle, stacking sequence and number of lamina on the frequency of the conical shells. The numerical results obtained using spline approximation are validated through existing literature.