Abstract
•We present a new spectral element based on the dynamic stiffness matrix of prestressed cylindrical shells.•Free boundary conditions are required for shell assemblies.•Harmonic analysis for two load cases are presented.•The numerical validation is achieved thanks to comparisons with FE results.
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This paper presents a new spectral element based on the dynamic stiffness matrix of a prestressed cylindrical shell. The dynamic stiffness matrix is built using first-order shear deformation theory, and natural frequencies are processed easily. Vibration analyses are performed with numerical examples to determine the performance of this approach and the effect of prestressing on frequency response functions. This element has many advantages over the finite element method in terms of accuracy, model size and computing time.