Dynamic behaviors of cylindrical shells with geometric imperfection

For finding out the relationship between vibrational modes and geometric imperfections, the dynamic behavior of cylindrical shells with a local imperfection is analyzed by using numerical simulation of finite element method in this paper. The results show that there are some differences in vibrational modes between cylindrical shells with and without imperfections. They appear that main corrugation of the mode of the higher orders for the shell with a local imperfection can be fastened on the region of the imperfection but the low order ones. The results also show that the vibrational modes of shells depend upon the size, shape and location of the imperfections. The local vibrational modes are discovered and are more obvious for the imperfection of the larger size. These results are helpful to the design of engineering structures.