Free vibration of a laminated circular ring segment

A new laminate model is presented for the dynamic analysis of a laminated circular ring segment. The differential equations which govern the free vibrations of a circular ring se-ment and the associated boundary conditions are derived by Hamilton's principle considering bending and shear deformation of all layers. The author used a new iterative process to successively refine the stress/strain field in the viscoelastic layer. The model includes the effects of transverse shear and rotatory inertia. The iterative model is used to predict the modal frequencies and damping of a simply supported sandwich circular arch. The solutions for a three-layer circular arch are compared to a three-layer approximate model. (C) 2001 Academic Press.