Abstract
A systematic procedure for obtaining the closed-form eigensolution for thin circular cylindrical shell vibrations is presented, which utilizes the computational power of existing commercial software packages. For cylindrical shells, the longitudinal, radial, and circumferential displacements are all coupled with each other due to Poissons ratio and the curvature of the shell. For beam and plate vibrations, the eigensolution can often be found without knowledge of absolute dimensions or material properties. For cylindrical shell vibrations, however, one must know the relative ratios between shell radius, length, and thickness, as well as Poissons ratio of the material. The mode shapes and natural frequencies can be determined analytically to within numerically determined coefficients for a wide variety of boundary conditions, including elastic and rigid ring stiffeners at the boundaries. Excellent agreement is obtained when the computed natural frequencies are compared with known experimental results.