On the vibration and stability of shear deformable FGM truncated conical shells subjected to an axial load

The aim of present study is to investigate the vibration and stability of functionally graded (FG) conical shells under a compressive axial load using the shear deformation theory (SDT). The basic equations of shear deformable FG conical shells are derived using Donnell shell theory and solved using Galerkin's method. The novelty of this study is to achieve closed-form solutions for the dimensionless frequencies and critical axial loads for freely-supported FG truncated conical shells on the basis of the SDT. Parametric studies are made to investigate effects of shear stresses, compositional profiles and conical shell characteristics on the critical parameters. Some comparisons with the various studies have been performed in order to show the accuracy of the present study. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.