An efficient approach for free vibration analysis of conical shells (Q1126240)

The global method of generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) is applied for the first time to study the free vibration of isotropic conical shells. The shell equations used are of Love-type. The displacement fields are expressed as product of unknown functions along the axial direction and Fourier functions along the circumferential direction. The derivatives in both the governing equations and the boundary conditions are discretized by the GDQ method. Using the GDQ method, the natural frequencies can be easily and accuretely obtained by using a considerably small number of grid points.