Free Vibrations of Cylindrical Shells with Non-Axisymmetric Mass Distribution on Elastic Bed

The free vibrations of circular cylindrical shells partiallyloaded by a distributed mass and rested on an elastic bed are studied in this paper. Both the mass-load and the elastic bed are assumed to be applied on limited arcs and with arbitrary distributions in circumferential direction,while they are considered to be uniformly distributed in longitudinaldirection on the entire shell length. Therefore, the problem is notaxisymmetric. The solution is obtained by using the development of theflexural mode shapes in a Fourier series, whose coefficients are determinedby rendering the Rayleigh quotient stationary, so a Galerkin equation isobtained. The proposed method is independent of the boundary conditionsat the shell ends. The results are satisfactorily compared to FEM results.Finally, the influence of the mass-load and of the bed stiffness on thenatural frequencies and mode shapes of a simply supported shell is shownand discussed.