Buckling and Free Vibration Characteristics of a Uniformly Heated Isotropic Cylindrical Panel

In this paper buckling and free vibration characteristics of an isotropic cylindrical panel subjected to uniform temperature rise has been investigated using finite element method. The procedure involves the determination of critical buckling temperature, which is followed by modal analysis considering pre-stress due to the thermal field in the cylindrical panel. Detailed studies are carried out to analyze the influence of curvature ratio, thickness ratio and aspect ratio on the critical buckling temperature and free vibration behavior of an isotropic cylindrical panel. It has been found that as the curvature ratio and the thickness ratio increases the thermal buckling strength of the cylindrical panel decreases. It has also been found that free vibration frequencies reduce with an increase in temperature and the reduction is more significant for the lowest frequency mode. It is observed that free vibration mode shapes at ambient temperature changes with an increase in temperature.