CHAOS IN A REAL SYSTEM

Many studies of chaos involve using simplified equations with little relation to a real system. Lorenz proposed a real system that demonstrates chaotic behavior - the classic Lorenz water wheel. This wheel, a mechanical analog to fluid heating in a box, consists of a number of buckets on the outside of a spoked wheel which rotates in a vertical plane. A filling source at the top of the wheel fills buckets as they pass under it. The filled buckets cause rotational dynamics, which at times exhibit a chaotic behavior. The requisite equations for a four-bucket wheel (sixth-order nonlinear model) are developed and implementation considerations enumerated. Some typical responses are presented.