The lowest axisymmetric modes of vibration of truncated conical shells are studied by means of a Rayleigh-Ritz procedure. Transverse shear deformation and rotatory inertia effects are accounted for, and the results are compared with those predicted by the classical thin-shell theory. Additionally, the results are compared when either of these theories is formulated in two ways: First, in the manner of Love’s first approximation in the classical thin-shell theory, and then by including the influence of the change of the element of arc length through the thickness. It was found that the Love and the more complex formulation yielded results which differed negligibly in either theory. The results predicted by the shear deformation-rotatory inertia theory differed significantly from those predicted by the classical thin-shell theory within a range of parameters which characterize short thick cones. These differences resulted principally from the influence of the transverse shear deformation. It was also found that within this short-cone range an increase in the shell thickness parameter was accompanied by an increase in the natural frequency. Moreover, the increase in frequency with increasing thickness parameter became less severe as the length-to-mean radius ratio was increased. For the longer cones, the frequency was virtually independent of the thickness.

No abstract

A technique is presented for the analysis of a wide class of reinforced, elastic structures undergoing free vibrations while subject to constraints imposed by the reinforcing elements. The technique consists of replacing the constrained structure by an equivalent model, a structure without reinforcing elements, undergoing free vibrations while subject to a loading system which consists of the structure-reinforcing element interaction forces. These forces are introduced as displacement-dependent loads, whose magnitudes reflect the elastic and inertial properties of the reinforcing elements. The displacements of the constrained body are expanded in terms of the normal modes of the unconstrained body. This approach leads to a set of manageable governing equations describing the behavior of the reinforced body exactly. A solution to these equations may then be obtained to any desired degree of accuracy. The technique is illustrated by computations performed for the case of a ring reinforced, circular cylindrical shell.

The response of a hollow cylinder of arbitrary thickness, embedded in an elastic medium, to a transient plane pressure wave is presented. The solution is valid within the scope of the linear theory of elasticity. The technique for obtaining the solutions relies upon (a) the construction of a train of incident pulses from steady-state components, where each pulse represents the time history of the transient stress in the incident wave, and (b) the existence of a physical mechanism which, between pulses, restores the disturbed particles of the cylinder and the surrounding medium to an unstrained state of rest. The validity of the technique is demonstrated by (a) comparisons with published data for limiting cases and (b) results obtained for a broad range of values of cylinder and surrounding medium parameters. The influence on the cylinder response of liner thickness and cylinder-medium impedance mismatch, when the incident wave is a step pulse, is investigated.

Torsional-vibration modes are uncoupled from the bending and extensional modes in thin shells of revolution. The solution for the uncoupled torsional modes then depends upon a linear second-order differential equation. The governing equation is subsequently solved for the frequencies of a conical shell. A tabulation of the first five frequencies for varying ratios of the terminal radii is presented. These frequencies are identical to those of an annular plate which has the same supports as the conical shell.