Free vibration analysis of laminated composite cylindrical shells by DQM

Abstract

In this paper, free vibrations of laminated composite cylindrical shells are investigated by the global method of generalized differential quadrature (GDQ). The GDQ method was developed to improve the differential quadrature (DQ) method for the computation of weighting coefficients. The differential equations of motion are formulated using Love's first approximation classical shell theory. The spatial derivatives in both the governing equations and the boundary conditions are discretized by the GDQ method. The GDQ method is examined by comparing its results with those available in the literature. It is demonstrated that, with the use of the GDQ method, the natural frequencies can be easily and accurately obtained by using a considerably small number of grid points. © 1997 Elsevier Science Limited.