Free vibration analysis of composite laminated conical shells by generalized differential quadrature

Abstract

This paper presents the first endeavour to apply the global method of generalized differential quadrature (CDQ) to the free vibration analysis of composite laminated conical shells. The GDQ method has been developed to improve the differential quadrature (DQ) technique for the computation of weighting coefficients. Love's first approximation thin shell theory is used to formulate the governing equations. The displacement fields are expressed as products of unknown functions along the axial direction and Fourier functions along the circumferential direction. By using the GDQ method, the natural frequencies can be easily and accurately obtained by using a considerably small number of grid points. The accuracy and efficiency of the GDQ method are examined by comparing the results with those in the literature and very good agreement is observed. The fundamental frequency parameters for four sets of boundary conditions and various shell thickness and different numbers of layers are also shown in the paper.