Dynamic analysis of coupled composite laminated shells with elastic boundary condition using a domain decomposition method

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the free and forced vibration behavior of coupled composite laminated shell are investigated by using a domain decomposition method under the elastic boundary condition. The coupled shell structure is combined in the form of a double curved shell-cylindrical shell-double curved shell, and the double curved shells at both ends are combined with the cylindrical shell upside down (figure 1). The double curved shell contains the elliptical, paraboloidal and hyperbolical shells. multi-segment partitioning technique is employed to establish the theoretical model based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). Regardless of the shell types and boundary conditions, the displacement functions of each shell are expended by the orthogonal ultraspherical polynomials in the meridional direction, and by the standard Fourier series in the circumferential direction. The boundary and continue conditions are generalized by the artificial spring technology. The convergence study and numerical comparison with finite element method (FEM) demonstrates that the proposed method has good reliability and accuracy to analyze the dynamic characteristics of the coupled composite laminated shell. The effects of material properties, geometric dimension, boundary condition and external force on the coupled composite laminated shell structure are proposed with some numerical results.