Free and Forced Vibration Analysis of Ring-Stiffened Conical–Cylindrical–Spherical Shells Through a Semi-Analytic Method

A semi-analytic method is presented to analyze free and forced vibrations of combined conical–cylindrical–spherical shells with ring stiffeners and bulkheads. First, according to locations of discontinuity, the combined shell is divided into one opened spherical shell and a number of conical segments, cylindrical segments, stiffeners, and bulkheads. Meanwhile, a semi-analytic approach is proposed to analyze the opened spherical shell. The opened spherical shell is divided into narrow strips, which are approximately treated as conical shells. Then, Flügge theory is adopted to describe motions of conical and cylindrical segments, and stiffeners with rectangular cross section are modeled as annular plates. Displacement functions of conical segments, cylindrical segments, and annular plates are expanded as power series, wave functions, and Bessel functions, respectively. To analyze arbitrary boundary conditions, artificial springs are employed to restrain displacements at boundaries. Last, continuity and boundary conditions are synthesized to the final governing equation. In vibration characteristics analysis, high accuracy of the present method is first demonstrated by comparing results of the present method with ones in literature and calculated by ansys. Further, axial displacement of boundaries and open angle of spherical shell have significant influence on the first two modes, and forced vibrations are easily affected by bulkheads and external force.