Chaotic Vibrations of a Cylindrical Shell-Panel with an In-Plane Elastic-Support at Boundary

This paper presents numerical results on chaotic vibrations of a shallow cylindrical shell-panel under harmonic lateral excitation. The shell, with a rectangular boundary, is simply supported for deflection and the shell is constrained elastically in an in-plane direction. Using the Donnell--Mushtari--Vlasov equation, modified with an inertia force, the basic equation is reduced to a nonlinear differential equation of a multiple-degree-of-freedom system by the Galerkin procedure. To estimate regions of the chaos, first, nonlinear responses of steady state vibration are calculated by the harmonic balance method. Next, time progresses of the chaotic response are obtained numerically by the Runge--Kutta--Gill method. The chaos accompanied with a dynamic snap-through of the shell is identified both by the Lyapunov exponent and the Poincaré projection onto the phase space. The Lyapunov dimension is carefully examined by increasing the assumed modes of vibration. The effects of the in-plane elastic constraint on the chaos of the shell are discussed.