Nonlinear coupled multi-mode vibrations of simply-supported cylindrical shells: Comparison studies

In spite of extensive studies on the nonlinear vibrations of cylindrical shells, the significant influences of some effective modes and the in-plane nonlinearity on the nonlinear coupled multi-mode vibrations are not clear. In this work, which is based on Donnell's nonlinear shell theory and Amabili–Reddy's third-order shear deformation theory, the nonlinear differential equations of motion of both the thin-walled and moderately thick cylindrical shells under the simply-supported boundary condition are established via Lagrange equations. These high-dimensional differential equations with the quadratic and cubic nonlinearities are solved by using an iteration procedure that is a combination of incremental harmonic balance method, pseudo-arclength method and extrapolation techniques. Turning and bifurcation points of the system are determined with the help of the direct method, the stability of solution of the frequency–response is examined by using the multi-variable Floquet theory. The numerical responses obtained by adopting two present shell theories are compared to investigate the influence of ignoring the in-plane nonlinearity on nonlinear vibrations. In the coupled multi-mode vibrations with respect to the fundamental mode m,n, apart from the regular modes i×m,j×n i=1,3,5,…,andj=0,1,2,3,… that include the axisymmetric and asymmetric modes, some irregular modes are taken into account to study the frequency–responses. Results show that present iteration procedure is efficient and successful to get the frequency–responses of the coupled multi-mode vibrations, and the influence of the irregular mode on the coupled multi-mode vibration is dependent on the relationship between the natural frequency of the irregular mode and that of the fundamental mode.