Free vibration of laminated orthotropic conical shell on Pasternak foundation by a domain decomposition method

By a domain decomposition method, free vibration characteristics of laminated orthotropic conical shells resting on Pasternak foundations are analyzed. The conical shell is divided into some conical shell segments in the meridional direction and separated from the geometric boundary and Pasternak foundation; the theoretical model is formulated based on a modified variational functional which includes energy of each conical shell segment, interface potentials (including the boundary potentials) and the energy due to the Pasternak foundation. Numerical comparisons with those published results are made to validate the high accuracy of the present method. The variation of the energy contribution of the shell with different thickness-to-radius ratio, cone angle and fibre orientation against various circumferential wave numbers are presented to help better understand the vibrational characteristics. Moreover, the effects of elastic foundation, boundary condition, stacking sequence and the variations in physical parameters of the shells on the natural frequencies are also investigated.