STABILITY AND BIFURCATION-ANALYSIS FOR OSCILLATORS WITH MOTION LIMITING CONSTRAINTS

The stability and bifurcation analysis is presented for a class of non-linear single-degree-of-freedom vibrating systems, excited by harmonic forcing. The common characteristic of these systems is that their damping and stiffness parameters can change abruptly at certain displacement values. The most general n-periodic steady state solutions with an arbitrary number of contacts per response cycle are analyzed. It is shown that, when the damping is positive, the change of stability of the steady state response cannot happen through a Hopf bifurcation. © 1990.