Analysis of the response of damped cylindrical shells carrying discontinuously constrained beam elements

A simple analysis is presented of the forced vibratory response of a cylindrical shell having a number of axial beams adhered to it by a viscoelastic material layer. The attached beams are identical, closely spaced and distributed around the full circumference of the shell. The excitation is a concentrated vibratory force acting radially at the mid-section on the surface of the shell. The end conditions of the shell and the attached beams are all assumed to be simply supported. The effects of the operational temperature and frequency on the viscoelastic material properties are considered. An experiment was conducted, for comparison, on a damped cylindrical shell suspended in air by lightweight elastic shock cords and driven at the mid-section by an electromechanical vibration shaker. Good correlations between the test data and analytical solutions were obtained over a wide range of frequencies.