The measurement of structural mobilities of a circular

cylindrical shell
Ruisen Ming, Jie Pan, and Michael P. Norton
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The University of Western Australia,
Nedlands 6907, Australia

Received 14 April 1999; revised 17 November 1999; accepted 21 November 1999

Structural mobility is useful for the estimation of structural power flows in coupled systems.
Although the methods of measuring structural mobilities are easily found for one-dimensional beam
structures, few are available for cylindrical shells. In this paper, a new method is proposed for the
measurement of the structural mobilities of a circular cylindrical shell. A point force excitation is
used instead of circumferential modal forces which are difficult to implement in practice. This
method utilizes the least squares technique to obtain the transfer function components of different
circumferential modes from the measured data. Experiments were carried out on a circular
cylindrical shell with different end conditions excited by a point force to verify the feasibility of this
proposed method. 2000 Acoustical Society of America. S0001-49660000603-2
PACS numbers: 43.40.Ey, 43.20.Ye CBB

INTRODUCTION

Circular cylindrical shells are important elements of

many types of industrial and defense structures. For the control of noise and vibration in coupled cylindrical shell systems, it is necessary to characterize the structural wave field
and the vibrational energy transmission across structural
joints. This characterization can be made by using structural
mobility functions.1 The theoretical calculation of structural
mobilities of a circular cylindrical shell has been studied by
several authors.14 However, the experimental measurement
of the structural mobilities has received scant attention, perhaps due to the difficulties in practically implementing a desirable circumferential modal force or in experimentally decomposing the wave components of different circumferential
modes. To date few methods are available for measuring the
structural mobilities of a circular cylindrical shell.
The structural vibration of a circular cylindrical shell
exhibits a two-dimensional modal pattern, presented by the
superposition of axial and circumferential modes. The vibrational components of different circumferential modes are orthogonal to each other and are required to be decomposed in
the analysis. Jong and Verheij have proposed a method5 to
experimentally decompose the acceleration components of
n0,1,2 circumferential modes at frequencies below the n
3 cutoff frequency in the wave field where the higher order
circumferential modal responses become insignificant. This
method utilizes the symmetrical nature of a circular cylindrical shell and a group of phase matched accelerometers on the
shell surface to obtain the circumferential modal amplitudes
and phases. This method cannot be applied to the near wave
field or the frequencies above the n3 cutoff frequency because higher order (n2) circumferential modal responses
are significant and the simple addition and subtraction of the
signals measured on eight symmetrical positions cannot
eliminate the effect of the higher order (n2) circumferential modal responses. Recently the authors6 have successfully
applied the method of least squares to decompose the vibra1374

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107 (3), March 2000

tion components of different circumferential modes. Theoretically this method has no frequency limit and can be applied to the case where the vibration is the superposition of
many circumferential modes. It has been demonstrated that
in the far wave field at frequencies below the n3 cutoff
frequency, these two methods give comparable results.6
In this paper, a new method is proposed and its theoretical basis is outlined for the measurement of structural mobilities in a circular cylindrical shell. A point force excitation
is employed instead of a desirable circumferential modal
force excitation which is difficult to implement in practice.
Therefore, the response of the shell is the superposition of
different circumferential modes. This proposed method uses
an array of phase matched accelerometers to simultaneously
measure dynamical responses at several positions around the
cross section of interest in a circular cylindrical shell. Then
the method of least squares is used during the data processing to decompose the transfer function components of different circumferential modal accelerations to the input force. A
series of experiments was carried out under laboratory conditions to verify the feasibility of this proposed method.

I. STRUCTURAL MOBILITIES
A. Prediction

Consider a circular cylindrical shell of thickness h, radius a and length L. Let the shell be referenced to a cylindrical coordinate system (r, ,x) where x is taken in the axial
direction of the shell, measures the angle in the circumferential direction, and the r axis is directed outward along the
radial direction, as shown in Fig. 1. If only a radial force per
unit area, F, acts on the shell surface and if u, v and w
represent the displacement components of the shell middle
surface in the axial, tangential and radial directions, respectively, the equation of motion ReissnerNaghdiBerry
theory for an element of shell can be written as7,8

0001-4966/2000/107(3)/1374/9/$17.00

2000 Acoustical Society of America

1374

n1

v n

V ns sin n n0

n1 s1

exp ik ns xi t ,

w n

n0

n0 s1

W ns cos n n0

exp ik ns xi t ,

FIG. 1. Coordinates for a circular cylindrical shell.

2
w
1 2
1 2
1 2 v
0;

2
2
2
2
2
x
2a
2a x a x
cp t
1a

1 2
1 2
1 2
1 2 u
1 2

v
2a x
2 x 2 a 2 2 c 2p t 2

1
1 3
3
2

a2
a2 3 x2

u
1
1 3
3
2
2 2 3 2
a x
a
a
x

1b

w0;
v

1
a2 2
F
2 4
,
2 1 2
2 w
a

t
B
cp

1c

where is the Poissons ratio, c p is the phase speed of an

extensional wave propagating in a thin plate, 2 h 2 /12a 2 ,
2 a 2 ( 2 / x 2 ) 2 / 2 is a Laplacian type operator, B
Eh/(1 2 ) is the extensional rigidity. At cross section x,
the effective transverse force S x , the bending moment M x ,
the extensional stress N x and the effective shear stress T x can
be expressed as8
S x D

2 2 v
3w
43 3 w

;
a2 x
a2 x 2 x3

2a

v 2w
2w
2 2 ;
M x D 2
a
x

2b

u v

w
N x B
x a

2c

T x

B 1 1 u
v
w
12 2 4 2
,
2)
a
x
x
2

2d

where DEh /(12(1 )) is the bending rigidity of the

shell.
The displacement components of the wave propagating
in a finite circular cylindrical shell can be expressed in the
following forms:9
3

u n n0
s1
U ns cos n n0
n0

J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

3a

Mx

Nx

T x T x0

n0

J n G n ,G n A 0n X n ;
Mx

Nx

4a

T x T xL

n0

J n G n ,G n A Ln X n ,

4b

where G n (1,s) (iD/a 3 ) ((k ns a) 3 (43 )n 2 k ns a(2

)nk ns a v ns );
G n 2,s

D
k ns a 2 n 2 n v ns ;
a2

G n 3,s

B
k a n v ns ;
a ns uns

G n 4,s

1 B
n uns 12 2 k ns a v ns
2 a

exp ik ns xi ti /2 ,
1375

Q x0 S x

3c

where n0 is a constant number representing the polarization

angle of nth circumferential mode; is the radian frequency;
n is the circumferential modal number; k ns is the axial wave
number and subscript s corresponds to the axial wave number solutions. In general, n0 n 10 does not hold. For a
single force excitation, however, this relation will hold. For
the breathing mode n0, the tangential component of displacement is zero actually the pure torsional wave exists but
is uncoupled with other wave components in circular cylindrical shells and the characteristic equation of the system is
sixth order. Therefore, three pairs m6 of axial wave number solutions exist for a finite circular cylindrical shell. Each
pair of solutions has the same magnitude but different phases
representing the axial waves simultaneously propagated
along cylindrical shells in both positive and negative directions. For n0, however, the characteristic equation of the
system is eighth order and four pairs m8 of axial wave
number solutions are possible. A pure imaginary or complex
wave number corresponds to an evanescent wave which is
important at positions near the source but becomes insignificant at positions more than one wavelength away from the
source. Only the wave with a pure real wave number can
propagate along cylindrical shells. For each n and s pair, the
coefficient ratios, uns U ns /W ns and v ns V ns /W ns , can
be obtained by solving Eqs. 1a and 1b.
Substituting Eq. 3 into 2 gives the stress and moment
resultant vectors at the two ends, x0 and xL, of the cylindrical shell as

Q xl S x

3b

4n 2 k ns a

s1,2,3,4 ;

Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1375

J n diag cos(n n0), cos(n n0), cos(n n0), sin(n

n0), A 0n diag E m ,B m , A Ln diag B m ,E m and B m
diag exp(ikn1L),exp(ikn2L), . . . ,exp(iknmL) are diagonal matrices; E m is an mm unit matrix (m3 for n0
and m4 for n0; X 0 W 01 ,W 02 , . . . ,W 06 T and X n
W n1 ,W n2 , . . . ,W n8 T (n0). X n can be determined by
solving the matrix equations resulting from the end boundary
conditions. For the calculation of structural mobilities of a
finite cylindrical shell, a free end condition is usually assumed at the end of x0 and a desirable external force vector is assumed to act on it. For example, for the calculation
of the radial force mobilities, only one external radial force is
assumed to act on the end of x0 and this external force
vector may consist of many circumferential modal forces,

that is, F n0
F n ,0,0,0 T . The force equilibrium at the
end of x0 gives a matrix equation, Q x0 F. The boundary condition at the other end (xL) will depend on practical considerations. For a free end condition, Q xl 0. For a
simply supported end condition, M x ,N x , w/ x ,u T xl
0, where M x and N x can be obtained from Eq. 4b. For a
clamped end condition, u, v ,w, w/ x xl 0. After X n is
determined, all the components of displacement at any position of the shell can be calculated and then the structural
mobilities can be evaluated from the ratios of the corresponding velocity components at the desirable position to the
acting external circumferential force.

B. Measurement

It is difficult in practice to generate a force which only

excites a single circumferential mode. If a point force is applied to a circular cylindrical shell, the response of the shell
will be the superposition of different circumferential modal
components n0,1,2, . . . . This is because a point force is
the sum of different circumferential modal forces theoretically the circumferential modal number ranges from 0 to
infinite. For example, if a point force f 0 acts at the position
(x0, 0 ), the radial force per unit area can be expressed
as

Y nv F

vF
v n n v n n H n

,
Fn i f 0
i

where H nv F is the transfer function of the tangential acceleration component of the nth circumferential mode to the input
point force. The above equations show that the measurement
of the structural mobility for the nth circumferential mode is
the measurement of the transfer function of the nth circumferential modal acceleration component to the input point
force. In order to determine the structural mobility, it is necessary to extract the corresponding transfer function component of the desirable circumferential mode from the measured transfer function signal.
Since the accelerometer is attached on the shell outer
surface during the measurement, its output signal is not equal
to the acceleration component of the shell middle surface
unless the accelerometer main axis is lying along the radial
direction. The relationships between the measured transfer
function signals and the transfer function of the acceleration
components on the shell middle surface to the input point
force are given by7
uF
Hm
H uF d

vF
Hm

n0

F n cos n 0 ,

where F n (1/ n ) f 0 (x0); n is equal to 2 for n0

and for n0.
By definition, the structural mobility of the nth circumferential mode is the ratio of the nth circumferential modal
velocity to the nth circumferential modal force. For example,
the input radial force mobility of the nth circumferential
mode can be expressed as
Y wF
n

n nw
n n H wF
w
n

,
Fn i f 0
i

H wF
n

is the transfer function of the nth circumferential

where
modal radial acceleration component to the input point force.
Similarly, the cross mobility Y nv F , the ratio of the tangential
velocity component to the radial force component of the nth
circumferential mode, can be expressed as
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

H wF
;
x

d
d H wF
1 H v F
;
a
a

8
wF
Hm
H wF ,

where d is the distance between the main axis of the rotauF

vF
, Hm
tional accelerometer and the shell middle surface; H m
wF
and H m are the measured transfer function signals when the
main axis of the accelerometer is lying along the axial, tangential and radial directions, respectively. To calculate H uF
and H v F , it is necessary to know H wF and its first order
derivative first. The first order derivative of H wF can be estimated from the data measured at two adjacent crosssections close to the cross-section of interest.
Substituting Eq. 3 into 8 gives

uF
Hm

n0

F f 0 x0 a a 0

H uF
n d

H wF
n
cos n n0
x

n0

vF

Hm

n1

uF
cos n n0 ;
H mn

9a

d v F nd wF
H
sin n n0
H
a n
a n

n0

vF
H mn
sin n n0 ;

9b

H wF
n cos n n0 .

9c

wF

Hm

n0

uF
Note that the modal transfer function components, H mn
,
wF
vF
H mn and H n , are complex numbers and they are characterized by an amplitude and phase or real and imaginary parts.
When the structural wave field is dominated by several circumferential modes, the measured transfer functions will be
approximately equal to the sum of those dominating transfer

Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1376

FIG. 2. Predicted magnitudes of the radial force mobilities a Y wF; b

Y uF; c Y vF] of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the freefree
end conditions for different circumferential modes: n0 - - - - -; n1,4,6
------; n2,5,8 and n3,7 -.

FIG. 3. Predicted magnitudes of the radial force mobilities a Y wF; b

Y uF; c Y vF] of a semi-infinite steel circular cylindrical shell for different
circumferential modes: n0 - - - - -; n1,4,6 ------; n2,5
and n3 -.

function components that is, the summations in the above

equations are taken by only considering these dominating
circumferential modes. For a circular cylindrical shell at frequencies below the mth cutoff frequency, the responses of
the higher order (nm) circumferential modes at the source
position do not display any resonance peak and they decrease
with increasing circumferential number n. Therefore, the
measured transfer functions in a frequency range can be approximately decomposed into a finite number of dominating
circumferential modal components. In order to determinate
all three orthogonal modal transfer function components at
frequencies where m circumferential modes dominate, it is
required to perform the measurements on at least N2m or
N2m1 if the breathing n0 mode is included positions for a single force excitation, n0 n 10 holds, N will
reduces to m1) in the three orthogonal directions at the
cross-section of interest. The required minimum measurement position number depends on the unknown coefficient
number of the circumferential modes of interest. It is also
noted that the separation distance between adjacent accelerometers should be less than a/m to satisfy the Nyquist
spatial sampling criterion.10

Although theoretically a vector containing N unknown

quantities can be determined from N experimental data, the
solution is usually unreliable because of measurement errors
and ill conditioned coefficient matrices due to the selection
of inappropriate measurement locations. A reliable solution
needs more than N measurement positions.11 The method of
uF
vF
, H mn
and H wF
least squares11 can be used to extract H mn
n
uF
vF
from the measured real and imaginary parts of H m , H m
and
wF
at more than N positions around a cross-section. For
Hm
example, at frequencies where m circumferential modes
dominate, these dominating radial transfer function components can be obtained from the minimization of its error
function e w

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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

e w

i1

wF
H m,i

H wF
n cos n n0 ,

10

where N((2m1)) is the total number of the measurewF

is the
ment positions on the cross section of interest and H m,i
measured radial transfer function component at position i. To
obtain a minimum value of the error function, both H wF
n and
n0 need to be adjusted. The minimization of e w is divided
for a
into two steps. The first step is to find optimal H wF
n
Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1377

FIG. 4. Measured ------- and predicted real parts of the radial

force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the freefree
uF
end conditions for n1: a ReY wF
1 ; b ReY 1 ; c negative values of
ReY v1F.

FIG. 5. Measured -------- and predicted imaginary parts of the

radial force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the
uF
vF
freefree end conditions for n1: a ImY wF
1 ; b ImY 1 ; c ImY 1 .

given n0 . The second step is to determine the optimal n0

by finding the minimum value of the error e w ( n0 ). The final
result of the two minimizations gives rise to the modal amplitude of the transfer function and the true value of the
polarization angle n0 .

should be negligible. For the case of free-damped end conditions, the shell was supported at a position 0.5 m away
from its free end by a piano wire with a very soft foam pad
and its another end was buried 0.5 m in a dry sand filled
box which intended to provide an effectively absorptive termination for all circumferential modes and wave types. For
both cases, the free end of interest was driven in the radial
direction by a mechanical shaker fed with a pseudo-random
noise signal.
To measure the driving force, an impedance head was
mounted at the driving location. The shaker and the impedance head were connected by a steel rod of 30 mm in length
and 1 mm in diameter to avoid possible axial and tangential
force excitations. Since the excitation was stable, the responses at different positions around the cross section of interest were measured by one B&K 4375 accelerometer at
different times. Therefore, the measured data should contain
no phase matching error. For the measurement of axial and
tangential acceleration components, an aluminum cube of 10
mm side dimensions was used to construct a rotational accelerometer. The masses of the accelerometer and the cube
are 2.4 g and 2.7 g, respectively. The predicted normalized
mass loading errors of measured accelerations are negligible

II. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A. Experimental setup

A 2.2-m-long steel circular cylindrical shell of a32.5

mm and h1.7 mm was used in the experiment. Two types
of end conditions were chosen: 1 freefree end conditions;
2 free-damped end conditions. For the case of freefree
end conditions, the cylindrical shell was supported nearly
point contact at positions 0.5 m away from both ends by two
piano wire fixed on a frame via two very soft foam pads. Due
to very low damping in the shell structure, light (1.6 kg/m2 )
damping strips Idikell were attached to the shell outer surface covering about 60% of the total surface area to increase the energy dissipation in the shell. The mass loading
of the damping strips is small surface mass density ratio is
less than 8% and the effect on the structural wave field
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1378

FIG. 6. Measured -------- and predicted real parts of the radial

force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the free-free
uF
end conditions for n2: a ReY wF
1 ; b ReY 1 ; c negative values of
vF
ReY 1 .

in the frequency range of interest. The transverse sensitivity

of the accelerometer was measured using a B&K 4294 Calibration Exciter and an aluminum cube. Two points were
marked on the accelerometer in the two orthogonal transverse axes, one of them has a minimum transverse sensitivity
reading. The transverse sensitivity components in the two
orthogonal transverse axes were 0.91% and 2.67%, respectively, at 159 Hz. During the measurements, the two orthogonal transverse axes or the marked points were directed along the axial, tangential or radial directions,
respectively, depending on which acceleration component is
of primary interest. The errors due to the presence of accelerometer transverse sensitivity were eliminated using the following equation during data processing:

v x
w
rx

xr

um

vm ,
wm

11

where x is the tangential component of the transverse sensitivity of the accelerometer whose main axis is directed
along the axial direction; (u m , v m ,w m ) are the measured acceleration signals.
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

FIG. 7. Measured ------- and predicted imaginary parts of the

radial force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the
uF
vF
freefree end conditions for n2: a ImY wF
1 ; b ImY 1 ; c ImY 1 .

The frequency range of analysis was set up to 3 kHz

from the LoveTimoshenko theory,8 the predicted cutoff
frequencies of the n2,3 circumferential modes are 1079 Hz
and 3053 Hz, respectively. In order to know the dominating
circumferential mode number at frequencies of interest and
then to determine the measurement position number at the
cross-section of interest, the magnitudes of low order circumferential modal mobility components are predicted, as
shown in Fig. 2 for a finite steel cylindrical shell with free
free end conditions and in Fig. 3 for a semi-infinite steel
cylindrical shell. It can be seen that the mobility components
of n1,2,3 circumferential modes dominate at frequencies of
interest. The measured transfer functions in Eq. 9 should be
approximately equal to the sum of the n1,2,3 circumferential modal components. Due to the point force excitation,
n0 n 10 holds. Therefore, at least four unknown quantities
are required to be determined for the estimation of circumferential modal mobility components at frequencies of interest. To assess the effect of the summation number in Eq. 9
on the measurement accuracy, different sets of circumferential modes n1,2,3; n1,2,3,4, n1,2,3,4,5 and
Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1379

FIG. 8. Measured ------- and predicted real parts of the radial

force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the freeuF
damped end conditions for n1: a ReY wF
1 ; b ReY 1 ; c negative
values of ReY v1F.

n0,1,2,3,4,5 are considered in the date processing for estimating the n1,2 circumferential modal mobility components from the same measurement data. It is shown that all
the results agree well, especially at frequencies close to the
resonance frequencies. The results shown in the following
figures are obtained by considering 4 n1,2,3,4 circumferential modes only from data measured on 12 positions.
Twelve measurement positions were uniformly distributed
the radial angle between the neighboring positions was 30
around the free end cross section. For the calculation of the
axial transfer function component, the first order derivative
was estimated from the data measured around the
of H wF
n
cross-section of the free end and that of 15 mm away from
the free end. Every measured transfer function signal both
real and imaginary parts was recorded in a dual-channel
real-time frequency analyzer.
B. Measurement of structural mobilities

For the cylindrical shell under test, the mobility component of the breathing n0 mode is quite small compared
with those of n1,2 circumferential modes at most frequencies, as shown in Figs. 2 and 3. The measured n0 mobility
components were much higher than the predicted ones at
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

FIG. 9. Measured ------- and predicted imaginary parts of the

radial force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the
uF
vF
free-damped end conditions for n1: a ImY wF
1 ; b ImY 1 ; c ImY 1 .

most frequencies and they were the residues. Therefore, the

measured mobility curves of the breathing n0 mode will
not be shown in the following. Only the mobility components of n1,2 circumferential modes were considered in the
analysis.
Figures 47 show the comparisons of the measured and
predicted real and imaginary parts of the input and cross
radial force mobilities of the finite circular cylindrical shell
under the freefree end conditions for n1 and 2, respectively. In Figs. 4c and 6c the negative values of the real
parts of the cross mobility Y vF
n are shown. It can be seen that
both the predicted and measured mobility curves show peaks
at the resonant frequencies. The predicted resonant frequencies are slightly lower at all frequencies for n1 and at frequencies above 1.82 kHz for n2 but little higher than the
measured ones at frequencies below 1.82 kHz for n2. The
measured n2,3 cutoff frequencies are 1028 Hz and 2884
Hz which are slightly lower than the predicted ones. These
could result from the errors in the assumption of the shell
material properties in the predictions. At frequencies below
the n2 cutoff frequencies, the measured n2 circumferenMing et al.: Mobilities of shells

1380

FIG. 10. Measured ------- and predicted real parts of the

radial force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the
uF
free-damped end conditions for n2: a ReY wF
1 ; b ReY 1 ; c negative
vF
values of ReY 1 .

tial modal mobility components do not agree well with the

predicted ones. This is because the residual effects of resonances of the n1 circumferential mode. At frequencies
above 2884 Hz, the measured curves shown in those figures
were not correct because the dominating circumferential
modes are different.
From Figs. 4 and 6, it can be seen that a large error
could be present in the measured mobilities at nonresonant
frequency, especially for cross mobilities. At some nonresonant frequencies especially for Y vn F , the measured real parts
of the mobilities are in opposite signs with or much higher
than the predicted values for clearness, the negative values
uF
vF
of ReY wF
n and ReY n and the positive values of ReY n
are not shown in the figures. This is because the measurement accuracy of a translational acceleration is usually
higher than that of a rotational acceleration, and because the
dissipation loss factor of the shell was so small that the wave
field was very reactive at nonresonant frequencies. In a very
reactive wave field, the measured signals could contain large
errors. This indicates that in a reactive wave field, the axial
and tangential mobilities at the nonresonant frequencies may
not be accurately measured by using this proposed method.
Figures 811 show the comparisons of the measured
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

FIG. 11. Measured ------- and predicted imaginary parts of

the radial force mobilities of a finite steel circular cylindrical shell under the
uF
vF
free-damped end conditions for n2: a ImY wF
1 ; b ImY 1 ; c ImY 1 .

and predicted real and imaginary parts of the input and cross
radial force mobilities of the finite circular cylindrical shell
under the free-damped end conditions for n1 and 2, respectively. Figures 8c and 10c show the negative real parts of
the cross mobility Y nv F . It can be seen that the measured
mobility curves under the free-damped end conditions is
smoother than those under the freefree end conditions
shown in Figs. 47, even at the troughs, except for the frequencies very close to the cutoff frequencies where a big
jump or fluctuation is observed. The reason is that the
damped end gave a very effectively absorptive termination.
Again, at frequencies above the n3 cutoff frequency, the
mobility curves are not correct because of the same reason
for Figs. 47. The measured mobility curves fluctuate while
the predicted ones do not. The frequency averages of the
measured real parts of the mobilities are slightly smaller than
their predicted ones while those of the measured imaginary
parts of the mobilities are a little larger than their predicted
ones. This is because the predictions were made based on the
semi-infinite circular cylindrical shell model but this assumed model does not accurately represent the actual cylindrical shell system. The damped end absorbed most but not
Ming et al.: Mobilities of shells

1381

all of the incident energy. From these figures it may be concluded that for cylindrical shells with free-damped end conditions this proposed method gives accurate results.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Support for this work from Australian Research Council

is gratefully acknowledged.

III. CONCLUSIONS

A new method is proposed in this paper to measure the

structural mobilities of a circular cylindrical shell. This
method utilizes a point force excitation instead of circumferential modal forces which are difficult to implement in practice. The method of least squares is employed to obtain the
transfer functions of different circumferential modal acceleration components to the input point force. The outlined
theory has been experimentally verified on a steel circular
cylindrical shell of different end conditions. The measured
results show that this proposed method is successful in measuring the structural mobilities of a circular cylindrical shell.
The measurement accuracy of this method, however, depends on the acceleration components of interest and the
properties of structural wave field. A radial force mobility is
usually more accurately measured than the axial or tangential
ones because the measurement accuracy of a translational
acceleration is higher than that of a rotational one. The absorption in the nonexcitation end will reduce measurement
error especially at nonresonant frequencies. Although only a
radial force excitation was demonstrated in the experiment,
this new method can be applied in principle to the cases of
other force excitations such as axial force excitation or
acoustical source excitation.

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J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 107, No. 3, March 2000

R. S. Ming, J. Pan, and M. P. Norton, The mobility functions and their

application in calculating power flow in coupled cylindrical shells, J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 17021713 1999.
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P. A. Franken, Input impedances of simple cylindrical structure, J.
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3
M. Heckl, Vibrations of point-driven cylindrical shells, J. Acoust. Soc.
Am. 34, 15531557 1962.
4
C. R. Fuller, The input mobility of an infinite circular cylindrical elastic
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