Performance evaluation for the domain decomposition method in nonlinear vibration of the composite hard-coating cylindrical shell

INTRODUCTION: The applications of the modified domain decomposition method in nonlinear vibration analysis of the composite hard-coating cylindrical shells are still at a relatively superficial level, owing to the fact that its performance under different decomposition parameters has not been thoroughly investigated for achieving sufficient precision. METHODS: A parametric domain decomposition method is developed to facilitate self-performance evaluation in nonlinear vibration analysis of the shell. Correspondingly, in order to avoid a mass of redundant computation of the segment stiffness and material damping matrices during iterations, a specialized preprocessing scheme is designed by pre-establishing the parametric analytical expressions and matrix databases. RESULTS: The resonant response is sensitive to the circumferential segment number, but weakly affected by the axial segment number. The optimum circumferential segment number in the present study is suggested to be N(θ) = 70, which can achieve good calculation accuracy and efficiency. Highly consistency is shown for the distributions of axial equivalent strain under different axial segment numbers. Smaller circumferential segment numbers would result in larger equivalent strain and bad solution accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: The sufficient solution accuracy of nonlinear vibration of the composite hard-coating cylindrical shell can't be achieved by increasing the axial segment number with constant segment width, but only by enough circumferential segment number, which is fundamentally determined by its equivalent strain distributions and gradients, and is with close relation to the axial and circumferential wave numbers of the shell.