Nonlinear dynamics of harmonically excited circular cylindrical shells containing fluid flow

In the present study, the geometrically nonlinear vibrations of circular cylindrical shells, subjected to internal fluid flow and to a radial harmonic excitation in the spectral neighbourhood of one of the lowest frequency modes, are investigated for different flow velocities. The shell is modelled by Donnell's nonlinear shell theory, retaining in-plane inertia and geometric imperfections; the fluid is modelled as a potential flow with the addition of unsteady viscous terms obtained by using the time-averaged Navier–Stokes equations. A harmonic concentrated force is applied at mid-length of the shell, acting in the radial direction. The shell is considered to be immersed in an external confined quiescent liquid and to contain a fluid flow, in order to reproduce conditions in previous water-tunnel experiments. For the same reason, complex boundary conditions are applied at the shell ends simulating conditions intermediate between clamped and simply supported ends. Numerical results obtained by using pseudo-arclength continuation methods and bifurcation analysis show the nonlinear response at different flow velocities for (i) a fixed excitation amplitude and variable excitation frequency, and (ii) fixed excitation frequency by varying the excitation amplitude. Bifurcation diagrams of Poincaré maps obtained from direct time integration are presented, as well as the maximum Lyapunov exponent, in order to classify the system dynamics. In particular, periodic, quasi-periodic, sub-harmonic and chaotic responses have been detected. The full spectrum of the Lyapunov exponents and the Lyapunov dimension have been calculated for the chaotic response; they reveal the occurrence of large-dimension hyperchaos.