Thermoelastic damping properties in hemi-ellipsoidal shells with variable thickness

Thermoelastic damping (TED) is a fundamental dissipation mechanism that inevitably exists in shell resonators with high quality factors. Based on the thermal energy method, this paper demonstrates an effective method for the TED characterization of the hemi-ellipsoidal shells with variable thickness which manifest lower TED compared with the hemispherical shells. The equation of motion of the hemi-ellipsoidal shell under clamped-free boundary conditions is established by Hamilton's principle and the assumed mode method, and the natural frequencies and mode shape functions of the hemi-ellipsoidal shell with variable thickness are obtained by solving the eigenvalue problem. The temperature field is acquired by solving the heat conduction equation along the radial direction, and an analytical model for the TED of the hemi-ellipsoidal shell with variable thickness is presented by calculating the maximum elastic potential energy and the work lost per cycle of vibration due to irreversible heat conduction. Analysis on TED at the vibration patterns of meridional wave number m = 1 and the circumferential wave number n = 2 or 3 where the shell resonators typically operate is carried out. The analytically calculated TED results are compared with those of the finite element method (FEM) to verify the feasibility and correctness of the present method. The influences of the geometrical parameters on the TED characteristics of the hemi-ellipsoidal shells with variable thickness are analyzed in detail. A meaningful discovery is that compared with the hemispherical shell, the hemi-ellipsoidal shell with variable thickness has a smaller TED when its semiminor axis is shorter than the semimajor axis, which is particularly significant for optimizing the design of the shell resonators with high quality factors.