Free vibration analysis of rotating cylindrical shells coupled with moderately thick annular plates

Thin cylindrical shells are commonly employed to connect adjacent disks in large rotating machinery. The vibration characteristics of coupled cylindrical shell and annular plate components have a significant influence on the rotor dynamics. This paper provides a general approach for the vibration analysis of a rotating cylindrical shell coupled with an annular plate. The Sanders shell theory and Mindlin plate theory are employed to calculate the strain energy of the shell and plate, respectively. The Coriolis and centrifugal effects due to the rotation are taken into account. The artificial spring technique is adopted to simulate the coupling and boundary conditions. By taking Chebyshev polynomials as the admissible functions, the Rayleigh-Ritz method is employed to derive the motion equations for the rotating shell-plate combination. The approach proposed is validated by comparing with the available results in literature and finite element analysis results. The traveling wave motion of the coupled shell and plate structure is investigated. The effects of the geometric parameters and the boundary and coupling conditions on the vibration behavior of the coupled structure are evaluated. The present approach can not only evaluate free vibrations of coupled shell and plate structures, but also be extended to vibration analysis of disk-drum rotors involving cylindrical shells.