The analysis of the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents in a two-degree-of-freedom vibro-impact system

In the study of dynamical systems, the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents has been shown to be an efficient tool for analyzing periodic motions and chaos. So far, different calculating methods of Lyapunov exponents have been proposed. Recently, a new method using local mappings was given to compute the Lyapunov exponents in non-smooth dynamical systems. By the help of this method and the coordinates transformation proposed in this paper, we investigate a two-degree-of-freedom vibro-impact system with two components. For this concrete model, we construct the local mappings and the Poincaré mapping which are used to describe the algorithm for calculating the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents. The spectra of Lyapunov exponents for periodic motions and chaos are computed by the presented method. Moreover, the largest Lyapunov exponents are calculated in a large parameter range for the studied system. Numerical simulations show the success of the improved method in a kind of two-degree-of-freedom vibro-impact systems.