Free vibration of angle-ply conical shells with linear thickness variation

Abstract

This paper aims to study the effect of arbitrarily linearly varying thickness in the axial direction and edge conditions on the vibration characteristics of shear deformable conical shells. The application of spline function technique for predicting the free vibration of composite laminated conical shells is also investigated. The solutions of displacement functions are assumed in a separable form to obtain a system of coupled differential equations in terms displacement and rotational functions and these displacements and rotational functions are approximated by cubic spline. A generalized eigenvalue problem is obtained and solved numerically for an eigen frequency parameter and an associated eigenvector of spline coefficients. The effect of cone angle, aspect ratio, thickness variation, number of lay ups, stacking sequence, materials used on the stability of conical shells are also discussed. New results presented may be fruitful for the related fields.