Global bifurcations and single-pulse homoclinic orbits of a plate subjected to the transverse and in-plane excitations

The Shilnikov-type single-pulse homoclinic orbits and chaotic dynamics of a simply supported truss core sandwich plate subjected to the transverse and the in-plane excitations are investigated in detail. The resonant case considered here is principal parametric resonance and 1:2 internal resonance. Based on the normal form theory, the desired form for the global perturbation method is obtained. By using the global perturbation method developed by Kovacic and Wiggins, explicit sufficient conditions for the existence of a Shilnikov-type homoclinic orbit are obtained, which implies that chaotic motionsmay occur for this class of truss core sandwich plate in the sense of Smale horseshoes. Numerical results obtained by using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method agree with theoretical analysis at least qualitatively. Copyright (C) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.