Free Vibration Analysis of Rotating Nonlinearly Elastic Structures with Symmetry: An Efficient Group-Equivariance Approach

A study is made of the dynamics of oscillating systems with a slowly varying parameter. A slowly varying forcing periodically crosses a critical value corresponding to a pitchfork bifurcation. The instantaneous phase portrait exhibits a centre when the forcing does not exceed the critical value, and a saddle and two centres with an associated double homoclinic loop separatrix beyond this value. The aim of this study is to construct a Poincaré map in order to describe the dynamics of the system as it repeatedly crosses the bifurcation point. For that purpose averaging methods and asymptotic matching techniques connecting local solutions are applied. Given the initial state and the values of the parameters the properties of the Poincaré map can be studied. Both sensitive dependence on initial conditions and (quasi) periodicity are observed. Moreover, Lyapunov exponents are computed. The asymptotic expressions for the Poincaré map are compared with numerical solutions of the full system that includes small damping.