Free vibration of conical shell frusta of variable thickness with fluid interaction

Abstract

Free vibration of layered conical shell frusta of thickness filled with fluid is investigated. The shell is made up of isotropic or specially orthotropic materials. Three types of thickness variations are considered, namely linear, exponential and sinusoidal along the radial direction of the conical shell structure. The equations of motion of the conical shell frusta are formulated using Love’s first approximation theory along with the fluid interaction. Velocity potential and Bernoulli’s equations have been applied for the expression of the pressure of the fluid. The fluid is assumed to be incompressible, inviscid and quiescent. The governing equations are modified by applying the separable form to the displacement functions and then it is obtained a system of coupled differential equations in terms of displacement functions. The displacement functions are approximated by cubic and quintics splines along with the boundary conditions to get generalized eigenvalue problem. The generalized eigenvalue problem is solved numerically for frequency parameters and then associated eigenvectors are calculated which are spline coefficients. The vibration of the shells with the effect of fluid is analyzed for finding the frequency parameters against the cone angle, length ratio, relative layer thickness, number of layers, stacking sequence, boundary conditions, linear, exponential and sinusoidal thickness variations and then results are presented in terms of tables and graphs.