Free vibration response of sandwich cylindrical shells with functionally graded material face sheets resting on Pasternak foundation

This paper focuses on the free vibration characteristics of functionally graded sandwich cylindrical shells resting on Pasternak elastic foundation. The free vibration analysis is based on three-dimensional elasticity theory and the natural frequencies are obtained by means of generalized differential quadrature method. The two-constituent functionally graded shell consists of ceramic and metal. These constituents are graded through the thickness according to a generalized power-law distribution with four parameters. The benefit of using the considered power-law distribution is to illustrate and present useful results arising from symmetric, asymmetric and classic profiles. A detailed parametric study is carried out in order to reveal the effects of different profiles of ceramic volume fraction, two-parameter elastic foundation modulus, different geometrical parameters such as the mid radius-to-thickness ratio, length-to-mean radius ratio and the thickness of face sheets on the vibrational characteristics of the functionally graded sandwich cylindrical shell.