Chaotic dynamics of flexible Euler-Bernoulli beams

Mathematical modeling and analysis of spatio-temporal chaotic dynamics of flexible simple and curved Euler-Bernoulli beams are carried out. The Karman-type geometric non-linearity is considered. Algorithms reducing partial differential equations which govern the dynamics of studied objects and associated boundary value problems are reduced to the Cauchy problem through both Finite Difference Method with the approximation of O(c(2)) and Finite Element Method. The obtained Cauchy problem is solved via the fourth and sixth-order Runge-Kutta methods. Validity and reliability of the results are rigorously discussed. Analysis of the chaotic dynamics of flexible Euler-Bernoulli beams for a series of boundary conditions is carried out with the help of the qualitative theory of differential equations. We analyze time histories, phase and modal portraits, autocorrelation functions, the Poincare and pseudo-Poincare maps, signs of the first four Lyapunov exponents, as well as the compression factor of the phase volume of an attractor. A novel scenario of transition from periodicity to chaos is obtained, and a transition from chaos to hyper-chaos is illustrated. In particular, we study and explain the phenomenon of transition from symmetric to asymmetric vibrations. Vibration-type charts are given regarding two control parameters: amplitude q(0) and frequency omega(p) of the uniformly distributed periodic excitation. Furthermore, we detected and illustrated how the so called temporal-space chaos is developed following the transition from regular to chaotic system dynamics. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.