CYLINDRICAL FINITE ELEMENTS FOR ANALYSIS OF CYLINDRICAL STRUCTURES

摘要

The overall aim of the work, of which this report is the first part, is the study of vibration of non-uniform thin cylindrical shells subjected to unsymmetrical static and dynamic pressure forces, by means of the finite-element method.nThis report deals with the establishment of a suitable finite element and the derivation of the stiffness, mass and stress-resultant matrices for the element. The finite element chosen was a cylindrical frustum, rather than the more usual triangular or rectangular flat plate elements, thereby allowing the use of the thin shell equations in full for determining the displacement functions and the matrices mentioned above. SANDERS' thin shell theory was used, as it was deemed to be the best from the point of view of satisfying the convergence criteria of the finite-element method.