Constitutive sensitivity of the oscillatory behaviour of hyperelastic cylindrical shells

• Free and forced nonlinear radial oscillations of a thick-walled cylindrical shell.
• A detailed and comprehensive analysis on the constitutive sensitivity.
• Mooney–Rivlin and Yeoh constitutive models calibrated using the same experiments.
• Critical conditions of oscillations strongly depend on the constitutive model.
• Yeoh material provides more conservative predictions than Mooney–Rivlin.

Free and forced nonlinear radial oscillations of a thick-walled cylindrical shell are investigated. The shell material is taken to be incompressible and isotropic within the framework of finite nonlinear elasticity. In comparison with previous seminal works dealing with the dynamic behaviour of hyperelastic cylindrical tubes, in this paper we have developed a broader analysis on the constitutive sensitivity of the oscillatory response of the shell. In this regard, our investigation is inspired by the recent works of Bucchi and Hearn (2013) [28] and [29], who carried out a constitutive sensitivity analysis of similar problem with hyperelastic cylindrical membranes subjected to static inflation. In the present paper we consider two different Helmholtz free-energy functions to describe the material behaviour: Mooney–Rivlin and Yeoh constitutive models. We carry out a systematic comparison of the results obtained by application of both constitutive models, paying specific attention to the critical initial and loading conditions which preclude the oscillatory response of the cylindrical tube. It has been found that these critical conditions are strongly dependent on the specific constitutive model selected, even though both Helmholtz free-energy functions were calibrated using the same experimental data.