Impact Oscillator Studies

Engineering systems with impacts are very common and impacting behaviour may be a part of the original design, for example where an allowance for thermal expansion is given between joints, or may be the result of components wear during system operation. The simplest model used to investigate impacting systems is a harmonically forced linear oscillator with an amplitude constraint.

This project looks into dynamic behaviour of simple impact oscillator with elastic secondary constraint. The bifurcations of the system are carefully studied under varying amplitude and frequency of the external excitation. The numerical simulations are supported by extensive experimental program where co-existing attractors and their basins of attractions are explored and particular attention is paid to the stability of the system responses