Thermal effects on chaotic vibrations of plates

In recent years the investigation of dynamical behavior of plates under the rmal loads has become Important because of the high temperatures reached on external skin panels of hypersonic vehicles. Other researchers have indica ted that the skin panels may encounter chaotic vibrations about their therm ally buckled positions. In this research the chaotic vibrations of simply s upported plates under thermal and sinusoidal excitation is studied to deter mine the predictability of the vibratory behavior of a representative class of such skin panels. The boundaries of regular and chaotic regions of moti on are defined In force temperature and force frequency planes and the sens itivity of these boundaries to changes in design parameters is explored for the purpose of developing useful design criteria. The onset of chaos is pr edicted through the computation of Lyapunov exponents. The effects of therm al moment and thermal buckling on chaos are studied. The results of the res earch are presented as a contribution to the panel design of hypersonic veh icles.