Abstract
The aim of this paper is to review tile literature oil tile large amplitude vibration of circumferentially closed shells and to Study tile nonlinear forced response characteristics of noncircular cylindrical shells. The Study is carried Out using semi-analytical method with the meridional approximation of the displacement field as the Superposition of the linear free vibration modal functions and the three noded quadratic finite element approximation in the circumferential direction. The Sander's type strain-displacement relations are used. The governing equations are solved using Newmark's time integration approach Coupled with tile Newton-Raphson iterative technique. The forced response curves in tile frequency domain are obtained from the steady state dynamic response of tile shells. Some of tile interesting characteristics pertaining to the noncircular shells are highlighted.