Some significant behaviors on strongly nonlinear vibrations are examined for a thin-walled cylindrical shell composed of the classical incompressible Mooney–Rivlin material and subjected to a single radial harmonic excitation at the inner surface. First, with the aid of Donnell’s nonlinear shallow-shell theory, Lagrange’s equations and the assumption of small strains, a nonlinear system of differential equations for the large deflection vibration of a thin-walled shell is obtained. Second, based on the condensation method, the nonlinear system of differential equations is reduced to a strongly nonlinear Duffing equation with a large parameter. Finally, by the appropriate parameter transformation and modified Lindstedt–Poincar[Formula: see text] method, the response curves for the amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency relations are presented. Numerical results demonstrate that the geometrically nonlinear characteristic of the shell undergoing large vibrations shows a hardening behavior, while the nonlinearity of the hyperelastic material should weak the hardening behavior to some extent.
