The damping of composite cylindrical shells using the wave propagation approach was theoretically studied. The vibration equations of the cylindrical shells were derived based on the Love’s 1st order shell theory. The wave propagation method was applied to solve the equations in order to establish the damping model of cylindrical shells. The theoretical results obtained by the model met well with the solutions obtained by the finite element analysis. In this paper the damping of composite cylindrical shells with and laminations was studied on three boundary conditions: SS-SS (simply supported- simply supported), C-F (champed- free) and C-C (champed-champed), furthermore the influence of orientations and geometry was also discussed.