Nonlinear Vibration of Truncated Conical Shells: Donnell, Sanders and Nemeth Theories

Abstract

Abstract Nonlinear free vibration of truncated conical shells has been investigated for three different shell theories; Donnell, Sanders and Nemeth to investigate the effect of their simplifying assumptions. The displacement field of a finite element model that was obtained from the exact solution of equilibrium equations of Sander’s improved first-approximation theory is used to define the nonlinear strain energy of conical shells. Employing generalized coordinates method the equations of motion are derived and subsequently the amplitude equation of nonlinear vibration of conical shells was developed. The amplitude equation is solved for multiple cases of isotropic materials. Linear and nonlinear free vibration results are validated against the existing studies in scientific literature and demonstrate good accordance. The validated model is used to investigate effects of different parameters including circumferential mode number, cone-half angle, length to radius ratio, thickness to radius ratio and boundary conditions for the nonlinear vibration of conical shells.