Nonlinear Normal Modes and Their Bifurcations for an Inertially Coupled Nonlinear Conservative System

This work concerns the nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) of a 2 degree-of-freedom autonomous conservative spring–mass–pendulum system, a system that exhibits inertial coupling between the two generalized coordinates and quadratic (even) nonlinearities. Several general methods introduced in the literature to calculate the NNMs of conservative systems are reviewed, and then applied to the spring–mass–pendulum system. These include the invariant manifold method, the multiple scales method, the asymptotic perturbation method and the method of harmonic balance. Then, an efficient numerical methodology is developed to calculate the exact NNMs, and this method is further used to analyze and follow the bifurcations of the NNMs as a function of linear frequency ratio p and total energy h. The bifurcations in NNMs, when near 1:2 and 1:1 resonances arise in the two linear modes, is investigated by perturbation techniques and the results are compared with those predicted by the exact numerical solutions. By using the method of multiple time scales (MTS), not only the bifurcation diagrams but also the low energy global dynamics of the system is obtained. The numerical method gives reliable results for the high-energy case. These bifurcation analyses provide a significant glimpse into the complex dynamics of the system. It is shown that when the total energy is sufficiently high, varying p, the ratio of the spring and the pendulum linear frequencies, results in the system undergoing an order–chaos–order sequence. This phenomenon is also presented and discussed.