Vibration of prolate spheroidal shells with shear deformation and rotatory inertia: axisymmetric case.

This paper presents the derivation of the equations for nonaxisymmetric motion of prolate spheroidal shells of constant thickness. The equations include the effect of distributed mechanical surface forces and moments. The shell theory used in this derivation includes three displacements and two thickness shear rotations. Thus, the effects of membrane, bending, shear deformation, and rotatory inertia are included in this theory. The resulting five coupled partial differential equations are self-adjoint and positive definite. The frequency-wave-number spectrum has five branches, two acoustic and three optical branches representing flexural, extensional, torsional, and two thickness shear. For the case of axisymmetric motion, these were computed for various spheroidal shell eccentricities and thickness-to-length ratios for a large number of modes. The axisymmetric dynamic response for damped shells of various eccentricities and thicknesses under point and ring surface forces are presented.