Abstract
There is an increasing usefulness of exact three-dimensional analyses of elastic cylinders and cylindrical shells in composite materials applications. Such analyses are considered as benchmarks for the range of applicability of corresponding studies based on two-dimensional and/or finite element modeling. Moreover, they provide valuable, accurate information in cases that corresponding predictions based on that later kind of approximate modeling is not satisfactory. Due to the complicated form of the governing equations of elasticity, such three-dimensional analyses are comparatively rare in the literature. There is therefore a need for further developments in that area. A survey of the literature dealing with three-dimensional dynamic analyses of cylinders and open cylindrical panels will serve towards such developments. This paper presents such a survey within the framework of linear elasticity.