Internal resonance of axially moving laminated circular cylindrical shells

The nonlinear vibrations of a thin, elastic, laminated composite circular cylindrical shell, moving in axial direction and having an internal resonance, are investigated in this study. Nonlinearities due to large-amplitude shell motion are considered by using Donnell’s nonlinear shallow-shell theory, with consideration of the effect of viscous structure damping. Differently from conventional Donnell’s nonlinear shallow-shell equations, an improved nonlinear model without employing Airy stress function is developed to study the nonlinear dynamics of thin shells. The system is discretized by Galerkin’s method while a model involving four degrees of freedom, allowing for the traveling wave response of the shell, is adopted. The method of harmonic balance is applied to study the nonlinear dynamic responses of the multi-degrees-of-freedom system. When the structure is excited close to a resonant frequency, very intricate frequency–response curves are obtained, which show strong modal interactions and one-to-one-to-one-to-one internal resonance phenomenon. The effects of different parameters on the complex dynamic response are investigated in this study. The stability of steady-state solutions is also analyzed in detail.