Free vibrations of cylindrical shells with elastic-support boundary conditions

This paper concerns the free vibrations of cylindrical shells with elastic boundary conditions. Based on the Flügge classical thin shell theory, the equations of motion for the cylindrical shells are solved by the method of wave propagations. The wave numbers are obtained by directly solving an eighth order equation. The elastic-support boundary conditions can be arbitrarily specified in terms of 8 independent sets of distributed springs. All the classical homogeneous boundary conditions can be considered as the special cases when the stiffness for each set of springs is equal to either infinity or zero. The present solutions are validated by the results previously given by other researchers and/or obtained using finite element models. The effects on the frequency parameters of elastic restraints are investigated for shells of different geometrical characteristics.