Abstract
Experimental results are presented on vibrations of a rectangular plate with an in-plane elastic constraint. One of the plate edges is clamped by rigid blocks. The other three edges are simply supported. The simply support edges are connected with elastic springs and are movable in in-plane direction. Effects of in-plane asymmetric force on nonlinear vibrations are investigated. Under the in-plane asymmetric force, the deflection of the plate shows the type of a softening-and-hardening spring. Under periodic lateral excitation, non-periodic responses are obtained in the typical frequency regions. The non-periodic responses are examined with the Fourier spectra and the maximum Lyapunov exponents. It is found that the chaotic responses are generated from internal resonance coupled with the lowest and second modes. In-plane asymmetric force increases the maximum Lyapunov exponents.
