Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Chaos has been popular areas of research for more than twenty years, it occurs in many disciplines of engineering and science such as mechanical oscillators, electrical circuits, lasers, nonlinear optical systems, chemical reactions, nerve cells, heated fluids, and many other systems [12]. A chaotic system is one which displays complex and unpredictable behaviour while being described by deterministic equations. There is no precise definition for a chaotic solution because it cannot be represented through standard mathematical functions. However, a chaotic solution is an aperiodic solution, which is endowed with some special identifiable characteristics. From a practical point of view, chaos can be defined as a bounded steady state behaviour that is not a equilibrium solution or a periodic solution or a quasiperiodic solution. The attractor associated with a chaotic motion in state space is not a simple geometrical object like a finite number of points, a closed curve, or a torus. In contrast with the spectra of periodic signals and quasiperiodic signals, which consist of a number of sharp spikes, the spectrum of a chaotic signal has a continuous broadband character. In addition to the broadband component, the spectrum of a chaotic signal often contains spikes that indicate the predominant frequencies of the signal. A chaotic motion is the superposition of a very large number of unstable periodic motions. Thus, a chaotic system may dwell for a brief time on a motion that is very nearly periodic and then may change to another periodic motion with a period that is k times that of the preceding motion. This constant evolution from one periodic motion to another produces a long time impression of randomness while showing short-term glimpses of order. The sensitivity to initial conditions is a prominent feature of chaotic motion, that is, tiny differences in the input can be quickly amplified to create overwhelming differences in the output. This is the so-called butterfly effect. A small perturbation created by the wings of a butterfly today in Beijing, China, can produce a torrential rainstorm next month in California. [1] The first person who identified the phenomenon of special sensitivity to initial conditions of the dynamic systems was Henri Poincare (1854-1912), the French outstanding mathematician, astronomer. In the previous century, he has commented that It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible. [12] 1

Despite the importance of Poincares work, and other work in the first half of the 20th century, the implications for unpredictable and chaotic behaviour were not widely appreciated until the advent of electronic computation. This is hardly surprising, since the fact that usable analytic formulae cannot be found for relatively uncomplicated dynamical models means that a proper appreciation of the nature of their solutions had to await such a development. Thus it was not until Edward Lorenz 1963 paper that a new era opened in nonlinear dynamics and chaos. Lorenz noticed that when he attempted to recompute a given orbit, using the same program on the same computer, he got a different result from the original. This was because his recorded values of state variables were less accurate than the internal representation used by the computer, so he was comparing two solutions which differed in their initial state by a small amount. The surprising effect is that, after a while, the two solutions do not seem to have much correlation with each other at all.[2] Professor Yoshisuke Ueda of Kyoto University, Japan is also one of the people who discovered chaos contemporaneous with Lorenz. He wrote in his autobiography On that day, the 27th of November, when I changed the parameter (frequency of the driving input), and the condition shifted from frequency entrainment to asynchronization, the oscillation phenomena portrayed by my analog computer was chaotic indeed. It was nothing like the smooth oval closed curves, but was more like a broken egg with jagged edges. My first concern was that my analog computer had gone bad. But I soon realized that that was not the case. It did not take long for me to recognize the mystery of it all. The fact that during the asynchronous phase, the shattered egg appeared more frequently than the smooth closed curves, and that the order of the dots which drew the shattered eggs was totally irregular and seemingly inexplicable. At present, people say that the data I was collecting with my analog computer on the 27th of November, 1961, is the oldest example of chaos discovered in a second order nonautonomous periodic system. Around the same time, it was Lorenz who made the discovery of chaos in a third order autonomous system.[29] To identify the chaotic properties of a nonlinear system, we can use some mathematical tools as bifurcation diagram, time history, phase trajectory, Poincar e section, power spectrum, sensitivity to initial conditions as well as maximum Lyapunov exponent. 1.2 Objective and scope The motivation of this thesis is to study the conditions that can possibly lead to chaotic motion and bifurcation behaviour in a post-buckling spring-bar system of SDOF under the action of a harmonically exciting force as well as present several different features of periodic motions and chaotic motions of the system. This first requires to establish the differential dynamic equation of motion of the system with geometric nonlinearity due to large displacement and choose the numerical method for the analysis of behaviours of the system. Then, the stability of fixed points and the periodic solutions of the system should be investigated. The essential thing is to compute the 2

bifurcation diagrams to show the regions of periodic motion and chaotic motion corresponding to varying parameters of the system. A number of mathematical tools including time history, phase trajectory, Poincare section, power spectrum, sensitivity to initial conditions as well as maximum Lyapunov exponent are used to describe periodic motions and chaotic motions of the system. 1.3 Outline of thesis Following the present chapter, chapter 2 presents the theoretical background of nonlinear dynamics. The numerical methods for solving dynamic problems are introduced in chapter 3. In chapter 4, the mathematical model of the post-buckling spring-bar system of SDOF under the action of a harmonically exciting force is established and the stability of fixed points as well as the periodic solutions of the system are investigated. Chapter 5 describes the results about the bifurcation diagrams corresponding to varying the parameters of the system and several different features including time history, phase trajectory, Poincar e section, power spectrum, sensitivity to initial conditions as well as maximum Lyapunov exponent of periodic motions and chaotic motions. Further, conclusions are given in chapter 6.