Effective decoupling method for derivation of eigenfunctions for closed cylindrical shell

Abstract

By expansion into Fourier series along the circumferential coordinate, the problem for elastic thin-walled closed cylindrical shell is reduced to 8th order differential equation with respect to axial coordinate. In spite that the general structure of eigenvalues for this equation was known starting from 60-s of last century, they were derived only to some simplified versions of the shell theory. So, the main goal of paper consists in development of the general procedure for determination of the eigenvalues. The idea is based on that the theory of shell is actually formed by two much simple problems: the plane task of elasticity and the plate problem, each of them is reduced to much easily treated biquadratic equation. So, we start from either of two problems (main problem) while not taking into account the impact from another (auxiliary) problem. After computing its eigenfunctions, we gradually introduce the influence of auxiliary problem by presenting its functions as linear combination of functions for main problem. The results of calculation show the perfect accuracy of the method for any desired number of significant digits in eigenvalues. The comparison with known results for concentrated radial force shows the perfect ability to solve any boundary problem with any desirable accuracy.