A Modified Fourier Solution for Free Damped Vibration Analysis of Sandwich Viscoelastic-Core Conical Shells and Annular Plates with Arbitrary Restraints

In this paper, arbitrary boundary conditions including classical and elastic ones are considered in analyzing the vibration and damping characteristics of the sandwich conical shells and annular plates using a simple and efficient modified Fourier solution. The displacement field is expressed as the linear combination of a standard Fourier series and several supplementary terms. The addition of these terms make the Fourier series expansion applicable to any boundary conditions, and the Fourier series expansions improved drastically regarding its accuracy and convergence. Instead of adopting conventional differentiation procedure, a Rayleigh-Ritz technique based on the energy function is conducted which leads to a set of algebraic equations. Then natural frequencies and loss factors can be obtained by solving the algebraic equations. Accuracy and reliability of the current method are checked by comparing the present results with the existing solutions. Influences of some vital parameters on the free vibration and damping performance of sandwich shells and plates are discussed. The detailed effect of restraints from different directions on the frequencies and loss factors is investigated. So, the method can provide a guide to design sandwich structures with desired vibration characteristic and well damping performance by reasonably adjusting the boundary condition. Some new numerical results are presented for future validation of various approximate/numerical methods.