Four modes competition and chaos in a shell

Steady-state chaotic vibrations of a shallow shell as a system with a nonsymmetrical restoring force and one equilibrium state are considered. Mode interaction and its effect on a chaotic behavior of the shell is studied. The terms "natural" and "imposed" chaos are introduced for the response of resonant and nonresonant modes. It is shown that such a qualitative difference is important for better understanding of chaos in systems with distributed parameters, and may be very useful for numerical investigations. Some qualitative comparisons with previous papers on chaos in distributed mechanical systems are also made. (c) 1994 American Institute of Physics.