Distributed neural signals on parabolic cylindrical shells

Parabolic cylindrical shells are commonly used as key components in communication antennas, space telescopes, solar collectors, etc. This study focuses on distributed modal neural sensing signals on a flexible simply-supported parabolic cylindrical shell panel. The parabolic cylindrical shell is fully laminated with a piezoelectric layer on its outer surface and the piezoelectric layer is segmented into infinitesimal elements (neurons) to investigate the microscopic distributed neural sensing signals. Since the dominant vibration component of the shell is usually the transverse oscillation, a new transverse mode shape function is defined. Two shell cases, i.e., the ratio of the meridian height to the half span distance of a parabola at 1:4 (shallow) and 1:1 (deep), are studied to reveal the curvature effect to the neural sensing signals. Studies suggest that the membrane signal component dominates for lower natural modes and the bending signal component dominates for higher natural modes. The meridional membrane and bending signal components are mostly concentrated on the high-curvature areas, while the longitudinal bending component is mostly concentrated on the relatively flat areas. The concentration behavior becomes more prominent as the parabolic cylindrical shell deepens, primarily resulting from the enhanced membrane effect due to the increased curvature.