Abstract
This study presents experimental results on chaotic vibrations of a shallow cylindrical shell-panel with clamped and simply-supported boundaries. Both opposite sides of rectangular boundaries are clamped by blocks and the other opposite sides are simply supported by flexible films. First, to find fundamental properties of the shell-panel, the linear natural frequencies and the characteristics of restoring force of the shell-panel are measured. Then, the shell-panel is excited with lateral periodic acceleration. In typical ranges of the exciting frequency, irregular non-periodic responses are generated. These responses are examined with the Fourier spectra, the principal component analysis, the maximum Lyapnov exponents and the Poincare projections. It is found that the predominant chaotic responses are generated from internal resonance condition of one to two and of one to three between the lower-modes of vibration of the shell-panel.
