Finite element studies on free vibration of laminated composite cylindrical skew panels

This paper presents the finite element studies made on free vibration of isotropic and laminated composite cylindrical skew panels. A finite element analysis is performed using CQUAD4 and CQUAD8 elements of MSC/NASTRAN software. The effects of the panel angle, skew angle, aspect ratio, and length-to-thickness-ratio on fundamental natural frequency of vibration of isotropic cylindrical skew panels are studied.The effects of additional parameters such as fiber orientation angle, numbers of layers (keeping total thickness constant), and laminate stacking sequence on the fundamental frequency of vibration of antisymmetric composite laminates have also been studied. During validation and convergence study, it is found that the CQUAD8 element yields more accurate results than the CQUAD4 element. Hence the CQUAD8 element has been employed for the remaining part of the investigation.The fundamental frequency is found to increasewith the panel angle and skew angle.The variation of the fundamental frequency with the number of layers is not appreciable when the number of layers is greater than about 6. It is also seen that the boundary conditions have significant influence on the fundamental frequency.