Abstract:The vibration characteristics on a highorder modal of a thin cylindrical shell is studied in this paper by analytical method under different boundary conditions. Firstly, the shell dynamics model is established by Galerkin′s method based on Love′s shell theory under simply supportedsimply supported, clampedclamped and clampedfree boundary conditions. Secondly, the modal characteristics are solved, and the highorder natural frequencies as well as threedimensional mode shapes are obtained. Finally, the results are compared with the data from the related literature and finite element method. The results show that the error values of natural frequencies using analytical method are less than 2% for the shell under simply supported boundary condition at both ends. The natural frequency increases after the first decrease when circumferential wave numbers are small, while it increases gradually when circumferential wave numbers are higher, but the natural frequencies increase significantly when axial halfwave numbers rise. Moreover, the threedimensional modal shapes obtained from the analytical method, related literature and finite element method are coincident.