Chaotic Oscillations of a Shallow Cylindrical Shell-Panel With a Concentrated Elastic-Support
Abstract This paper presents numerical solutions on chaotic oscillations of a shallow cylindrical shell-panel excited by a periodic acceleration. The shell with rectangular boundary is simply supported along all edges, and the center of the shell is supported by an elastic spring. The Donnell-Mushtari-Vlasov type equation is used with the modification of an inertia force. The governing equation is reduced to a nonlinear differential equation of a multi-degree-of-freedom system by the Bubnov-Galerkin procedure. To estimate regions of the chaotic response, periodic solutions of steady state response are first calculated by the harmonic balance method. Next, time evolutions of the chaotic motion are obtained numerically by the Runge-Kutta-Gill method. The chaotic response accompanied with a dynamic snap-through is identified both by means of Lyapunov exponents and Poincaré projections. For the shell with a spring, the Lyapunov dimension is smaller than for the case without the spring. Multiple modes of vibration contributes to the generation of chaos, in paticular, the higher modes of vibration are significant.