Experiments and analysis on chaotic vibrations of a shallow cylindrical shell-panel

Abstract Detailed experimental results and analytical results are presented on chaotic vibrations of a shallow cylindrical shell-panel subjected to gravity and periodic excitation. The shallow shell-panel with square boundary is simply supported for deflection. In-plane displacement at the boundary is elastically constrained by in-plain springs. In the experiment, the cylindrical shallow shell-panel with thickness 0.24 mm, square form of length 140 mm and mean radius 5150 mm is used for the test specimen. All edges around the shell boundary are simply supported by adhesive flexible films. First, to find fundamental properties of the shell-panel, linear natural frequencies and characteristics of restoring force of the shell-panel are measured. These results are compared with the relevant analytical results. Then, geometrical parameters of the shell-panel are identified. Exciting the shell-panel with lateral periodic acceleration, nonlinear frequency responses of the shell-panel are obtained by sweeping the frequency of periodic acceleration. In typical ranges of the exciting frequency, predominant chaotic responses are generated. Time histories of the responses are recorded for inspection of the chaos. In the analysis, the Donnell equation with lateral inertia force is introduced. Assuming mode functions, the governing equation is reduced to a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by the Galerkin procedure. Periodic responses are calculated by the harmonic balance method. Chaotic responses are integrated numerically by the Runge–Kutta–Gill method. The chaotic responses, which are obtained by the experiment and the analysis, are inspected with the Fourier spectra, the Poincare projections, the maximum Lyapunov exponents and the Lyapunov dimension. It is found that the dominant chaotic responses of the shell-panel are generated from the responses of the sub-harmonic resonance of 1 2 order and of the ultra-sub-harmonic resonance of 2 3 order. By the convergence of the maximum Lyapunov exponent to the embedding dimension, the number of predominant vibration modes which contribute to the chaos is found to be three or four. Fairly good agreements are obtained between the experimental results and the analytical results.