Bifurcations in a Pre-Stressed, Harmonically Excited, Vibro-Impact Oscillator at Subharmonic Resonances

This study investigates the behavior of a damped, inelastic, sinusoidally forced impact oscillator which has its barrier placed such that the oscillator always vibrates under compression about its subharmonic resonant frequencies. The Poincaré sections at near subharmonic resonance conditions exhibit finger-shaped chaotic attractors, similar to the strange attractor mapping of Hénon and the ones found by Holmes in his study of chaotic resonances of a buckled beam. The number of such fingers are observed to increase as the barrier distance from the equilibrium is decreased. These chaotic states are interspersed with regimes of periodic behavior, with the periodicity being in accordance with well defined period adding laws. This study also focuses on the ordered behavior of the one-impact period-p orbits around the higher subharmonics of the oscillator.