Maxi-element analysis for free vibrations of orthotropic shells of revolution

The theory of free vibration for orthotropic shells of revolution with arbitrary homogeneous boundary conditions is developed. The essence of the method is to decompose the overall shell into a number of so-called cylindrical, conical, and plate “maxi-elements”. Since the eigenfunctions of each of the individual maxi-elements are analytically determined directly from the solution of the governing differential equations, the procedure has the advantage of requiring significantly fewer elements compared with the usual finite element or finite difference procedures. For the conical shell and the plate, the method of solution is novel, while the solution for the cylindrical shell has been published by the first author. The versatility and accuracy of the method is shown through the inclusion of a number of examples which present the excellent correlation with test results and other numerical schemes.