Cylindrical shell plays an important role in aerospace engineering, and it is of great significance to research on damping characteristics during its motion in the air. In this paper , the dynamic responses of cylindrical shells were analyzed using the ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian ) finite element method in LS-DYNA software, and the validity of the model got verified. Then equivalent damping coefficients of the system were obtained using inversion method by the Isight software, which were verified by comparing with corresponding models . The results indicate that the inversion damping coefficients can be used to replace the ALE method in simulating cylindrical shell’s motion in the air, while the stiffness and mass have little effect on damping coefficients.