Accurate Results for Free Vibration of Doubly Curved Shallow Shells of Rectangular Planform (Part.1)

A method is presented for determining the free vibration frequencies of doubly curved, isotropic shallow shells under general edge conditions and is used to obtain accurate natural frequencies for wide range of geometric parameters. Based on the shallow shell theory applicable to thin thickness shells, a method of Ritz is extended to derive a frequency equation wherein the displacement functions are modified to accommodate arbitrary sets of edge conditions for both in-plane and out-of-plane motions. In numerical computation, convergence is tested against series terms and comparison study is made with existing results by other authors. Twenty one sets of frequency parameters are tabulated for a wide range of shell shape and curvature ratio to serve as data for future comparison and practical design purpose