Abstract.A double transform method is used to determine the response of a submerged, infinitely long, circular cylindrical shell to a plane acoustic wave which acts initially at an isolated cross section, and then proceeds to propagate along the axis of the cylinder, symmetrically with respect to that cross section.The application of the saddle point method to the inversion integral results in an asymptotic solution, valid for long time. Comparisons are made with the analogous steady-state solution obtained by using piston theory to describe the effects of the fluid on the shell.I. Introduction. The investigation of the interaction of acoustic media and shell structures has been extensively treated in the literature. One class of these studies has concerned itself with the response of structures to engulfing pressure waves. In the vast majority of these studies, the reflected acoustic field is accounted for by making a plane wave assumption, that is, by using the so-called piston theory [1], [2], This simplification results in the uncoupling of the acoustic and elastic fields, thereby significantly reducing the analytical difficulties. It is well known that the use of piston theory, which for short time responses is reasonably valid, is highly suspect for long times. However, since solutions of the exact coupled fields were nonexistent until recently, it was impossible to determine the range of applicability of these approximate solutions. Haywood [3] investigated a simplified form of the plane problem of the engulfing wave by assuming that the shell is suddenly subjected to a hydrostatic pressure. Neglecting the mass of the shell, and using a cylindrical wave approximation, he showed that the plane wave approximation underestimated the shell response. Wore recently several papers have appeared in which the exact solutions of some interaction problems have been obtained and then compared to the approximate solutions. In the first of these, Herman and Klosner [4] determined the response of a circular cylindrical shell to a sudden pressure increase in its surrounding fluid. In order to simplify the mathematical difficulties, and yet retain the characteristic form of the time dependency, the pressure was assumed to vary periodically along the axis of the shell. The results in-*