Free vibration analysis of circular cylindrical shells using transfer matrix method

Transfer matrix method is employed to analyze the natural frequencies and natural modes of circular cylindrical shells in this paper. Using the Flugge shell theory, which is more accurate and complex than the Goldenveizer-Novozhilov shell theory adopted in previous investigations, the derivation of field transfer matrix is more difficult and complicated than that of previous papers. In numerical calculation the elements of the transfer matrix are determined by using the precise integration technique, instead of the Runge-Kutta-Gill method in previous papers. Numerical results show that transfer matrix method using the Flugge shell theory is very accurate, and what is more important, it can solve all natural modes including the axial and torsional modes difficult to be obtained by other methods.