A non-classical model for circular cylindrical thin shells incorporating microstructure and surface energy effects (Q2234267)

The novel non-classical model for circular cylindrical thin shells was developed using a modified couple stress theory, a surface elasticity theory, and Hamilton's principle. An application of the variational formulation leads to the derivation of the equations of motion and boundary conditions and provides a treatment of the microstructure and surface energy effects. This non-classical shell model contains one material length scale parameter to describe the microstructure effect and three surface elastic constants to describe the surface energy effect. The developed shell model gives the classical circular cylindrical Love-Kirchhoff thin shell model if both the microstructure and surface energy effects are not taken into account. For the static bending problem, the numerical results show that the shell deflection predicted by the proposed model is smaller than that predicted by the classical model, but the difference diminishes as the shell thickness increases. For the free vibration problem, the natural frequency predicted by the new model is higher than that predicted by its classical counterpart, but the difference is large only for very thin shells. These effects agree with the results of experiments.