The purpose of the-present study is to show theoretically that dynamic instability takes place in a clamped spherical shell under a partially distributed normal follower force. Large deflection and stability of shallow and deep spherical shells are studied. The axisymmetric equilibrium states are solved through a Newton-Raphson technique on discretized nonlinear shell equations by means of finite difference method. The stability of the respective equilibrium states on the axisymmetric fundamental equilibrium path is examined by the dynamic method. In this study, it is shown that transition from stability to instability takes place not only in the form of static instability, but also in the form of dynamic instability.
