Geometrically non-linear free and forced vibrations of simply supported circular cylindrical shells: A semi-analytical approach

The non-linear free and forced vibrations of simply supported thin circular cylindrical shells are investigated using Lagrange's equations and an improved transverse displacement expansion. The purpose of this approach was to provide engineers and designers with an easy method for determining the shell non-linear mode shapes, with their corresponding amplitude dependent non-linear frequencies. The Donnell non-linear shell theory has been used and the flexural deformations at large vibration amplitudes have been taken into account. The transverse displacement expansion has been made using two terms including both the driven and the axisymmetric modes, and satisfying the simply supported boundary conditions. The non-linear dynamic variational problem obtained by applying Lagrange's equations was then transformed into a static case by adopting the harmonic balance method. Minimisation of the energy functional with respect to the basic function contribution coefficients has led to a simple non-linear multi-modal equation, the solution of which gives in the case of a single mode assumption an expression for the non-linear frequencies which is much simpler than that derived from the non-linear partial differential equation obtained previously by several authors. Quantitative results based on the present approach have been computed and compared with experimental data. The good agreement found was very satisfactory, in comparison with previous old and recent theoretical approaches, based on sophisticated numerical methods, such as the finite element method (FEM), the method of normal forms (MNF), and analytical methods, such as the perturbation method.