This work investigates the influence of physical and geometrical system parameters uncertainties and excitation noise on the nonlinear vibrations and stability of simply-supported cylindrical shells. These parameters are composed of both deterministic and random terms. Donnell's non-linear shallow shell theory is used to study the non-linear vibrations of the shell. To discretize the partial differential equations of motion, first, a general expression for the transversal displacement is obtained by a perturbation procedure which identifies all modes that couple with the linear modes through the quadratic and cubic nonlinearities. Then, a particular solution is selected which ensures the convergence of the response up to very large deflections. Finally, the in-plane displacements are obtained as a function of the transversal displacement by solving the in-plane equations analytically and imposing the necessary boundary, continuity and symmetry conditions. Substituting the obtained modal expansions into the equation of motion and applying the Galerkin's method, a discrete system in time domain is obtained. Several numerical strategies are used to study the nonlinear behavior of the shell considering the uncertainties in the physical and geometrical system parameters. Special attention is given to the influence of the uncertainties on the parametric instability and escape boundaries.
dynamic instability; uncertainties; nonlinear analysis; cylindrical shells
