Vibration analysis of truncated conical shells subjected to flowing fluid

A method to predict the dynamic behaviour of anisotropic truncated conical shells conveying fluid is presented in this paper. It is a combination of finite element method and classical shell theory. The displacement functions are derived from exact solutions of Sanders’ shell equilibrium equations of conical shells. The velocity potential, Bernoulli’s equation and impermeability condition have been applied to the shell–fluid interface to obtain an explicit expression for fluid pressure which yields three forces (inertial, centrifugal, Coriolis) of the moving fluid. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper reports the first comparison made between two works which deal with conical shells subjected to internal flowing fluid effects. The results obtained by this method for conical shells with various boundary condition and geometries, in vacuum, fully-filled and when subjected to flowing fluid were compared with those of other experimental and numerical investigations and good agreement was obtained.