3-D EXACT FREE-VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF TRANSVERSELY ISOTROPIC CYLINDRICAL PANELS

This paper presents an exact analysis of the free vibration of simply supported, transversely isotropic cylindrical panels. Based on the thr ee dimensional elasticity for transversely isotropic media, three disp lacement functions are introduced so that the equations of motion are uncoupled and simplified. After expanding these functions with orthogo nal series, the equations of free vibration problems are further reduc ed to three second order ordinary differential equations. A modified B essel function solution,with complex arguments is then directly used f or the case of complex eigenvalues, which, to the authors' knowledge, has never been reported before. To clarify the correctness and effecti veness of the developed method, numerical examples are presented and c ompared to the results of existent papers.