Vibrations of stiffened cylinders with cutouts

An approximate method of determining the free vibration characteristics of ring and/or stringer-stiffened cylindrical shells with cutouts is presented in this paper. The method is based on the Rayleigh-Ritz technique in which beam characteristic functions (axially) and trigonometric functions (circumferentially) are used in the displacement series for the shell reference surface. It was found that the cutouts generally tend to decrease the frequencies. This effect is the largest on the fundamental frequency. Physically this means that a cutout reduces the effective shell stiffness to a greater extent than it does the effective mass. The mode shapes display strong coupling of the distinct wave forms of an otherwise uniform shell. They also reveal the possibility of peak amplitudes in the normal displacements both near and away from the edges of the cutouts. The reductions in the lower frequencies (caused by cutouts) for the stiffened shell were found to be less than those for the unstiffened shell.