Vibrations and buckling of composite orthotropic cylindrical shells with nonuniform axial loads

The vibrational response of orthotropic composite cylindrical shells, subjected to circumferentially nonuniform axial loads, is investigated based on Flügge-type field equations. The use of a complex finite Fourier transform provides a simple method for handling any arbitrary nonuniform load but introduces modal coupling between the transformed equations. For simply supported boundaries (conditions SS3) the determination of the critical buckling load reduces to finding the eigenvalues of a finite matrix. Two different nonuniform loads are considered, having forms proportional to (1+2cos θ) and (θ*?θ), where is the Heaviside function, θ is the circumferential coordinate and aθ* is the width of an axial strip of the shell of radius a. Computed results indicate the sensitivity of the critical buckling loads and free vibrational frequency to the type of nonuniform load and the material lay-ups of the cylinders.