Axisymmetric vibration of cylindrical shells with intermediate ring supports

This paper treats the axisymmetric vibration of thin circular cylindrical shells with intermediate ring supports based on the Goldenveizer–Novozhilov thin shell theory. An analytical method is proposed, and new exact solutions are presented to study the axisymmetric vibration characteristics of the ring supported cylindrical shells. In the proposed method, the state-space technique is employed to derive a homogenous differential equation system for a shell segment, and a domain decomposition approach is developed to cater for the continuity requirements between shell segments. Exact frequency parameters are presented for circular cylindrical shells that have multiple intermediate ring supports and various combinations of end support conditions. These exact vibration frequencies may serve as important benchmarks against which researchers can validate their numerical methods for such circular cylindrical shell problems.