On the Global Geometric Structure of the Dynamics of the Elastic Pendulum

We approach the planar elastic pendulum as a singular perturbation of the pendulum to show that its dynamics are governed by global two-dimensional invariant manifolds of motion. One of the manifolds is nonlinear and carries purely slow periodic oscillations. The other one, on the other hand, is linear and carries purely fast radial oscillations. For sufficiently small coupling between the angular and radial degrees of freedom, both manifolds are global and orbitally stable up to energy levels exceeding that of the unstable equilibrium of the system. For fixed value of coupling, the fast invariant manifold bifurcates transversely to create unstable radial oscillations exhibiting energy transfer. Poincaré sections of iso-energetic manifolds reveal that only motions on and near a separatrix emanating from the unstable region of the fast invariant manifold exhibit energy transfer.     

Controlling angular oscillations through mass reconfiguration: a variable length pendulum case

The control of angular oscillations or energy of a system through mass reconfiguration is examined using a variable length pendulum. Control is accomplished by sliding the end mass towards and away from the pivot as the pendulum oscillates. The resulting attenuation or amplification of the angular oscillations are explained using the Coriolis inertia force and by examining the energy variation during an oscillation cycle. Simple rules relating the sliding motion to the angular oscillations are proposed and assessed using numerical simulations. An equivalent viscous damping ratio is introduced to quantify the attenuation/amplification phenomena. Sliding motion profiles for achieving attenuation have been simulated with the results being discussed in detail.     

Galloping instability and control of a rigid pendulum in a flowing soap film

A pendulum suspended in a fast flowing soap film may show sustained oscillations. The conditions necessary for self-excited motion to occur are outlined: a flow velocity above a threshold value along with geometrical constraints. The role of vortex shedding is discussed, and the observed instability is shown to be well-described by the galloping instability. Experimental results are supported by numerical simulations. Furthermore, we observe that the instability may be suppressed by attaching a long enough filament to the rear of the pendulum.     

Inverted pendulum under hysteretic control: stability zones and periodic solutions

In this paper, the mathematical model of the stabilization of the inverted pendulum with vertically oscillating suspension under hysteretic control is constructed. In the frame of the presented model, the stability criteria for the linearized equations of motion are found. We have made the numerical construction of the stability zones in the two-dimensional parameter space. Dependencies between initial conditions and driven parameters that provide periodic oscillations of the pendulum are obtained.     

Pendulum motions of extended lunar space elevator

In the usual everyday life, it is well known that the inverted pendulum is unstable and is ready to fall to “all four sides,” to the left and to the right, forward and backward. The theoretical studies and the lunar experience of moon robots and astronauts also confirms this property. The question arises: Is this property preserved if the pendulum is “very, very long”? It turns out that the answer is negative; namely, if the pendulum length significantly exceeds the Moon radius, then the radial equilibria at which the pendulum is located along the straight line connecting the Earth and Moon centers are Lyapunov stable and the pendulum does not fall in any direction at all. Moreover, if the pendulum goes beyond the collinear libration points, then it can be extended and manufactured from cables. This property was noted by F. A. Tsander and underlies the so-called lunar space elevator (e.g., see [1]). In the plane of the Earth and Moon orbits, there are some other equilibria which turn out to be unstable. The question is, Are there equilibria at which the pendulum is located outside the orbital plane? In this paper, we show that the answer is positive, but such equilibria are unstable in the secular sense. We also study necessary conditions for the stability of lunar pendulum oscillations in the plane of the lunar orbit. It was numerically discovered that stable and unstable equilibria alternate depending on the oscillation amplitude and the angular velocity of rotation. The study of the lunar elevator dynamics originates in [2]. The concept of lunar elevator was developed in detail in [3, 4]. Several classes of equilibria with the finiteness of the Moon size taken into account were studied in [5]. The possibility of location of an orbital station fixed to the Moon surface by a pair of tethers was investigated in [6]. The problem of orientation of the terminal station of the lunar space elevator was studied in [7]. The influence of the tether length variations on the motion of the lunar tether system was considered in [8]. The alternation of stable and unstable flat oscillations is well known in the problem of satellite oscillations in a circular orbit [9, 10].     

On the Need for Control of Nonlinear Oscillations in Machine Systems

Oscillations in machines are invariably nonlinear. This is either because of inertial coupling effects between different motions of the moving components, material and constitutive phenomena giving rise to stiffness modifications, nonlinear dissipation mechanisms, large deflections, or, as is most likely, some sort of combination of all of these. The net effect of nonlinear vibrations is that at best the machine may well behave a little differently from the way the designer intended, or at worst, in a manner which renders it completely unsuitable for the job. The extent of such problems depends on the nature and the scale of the nonlinearities that are present but it is safe to say that nonlinear oscillations can rarely be completely overlooked in precision machinery analysis and design. The unifying theme in this paper is pendulum motion, firstly in the case of a mobile gantry crane for container stacking where we wish to minimise such motion and converge on a target, and then secondly in the case of a vibration absorber in which we choose to initiate pendulum motion within a special absorber, for the purposes of vibration minimisation. The third example involves the potential for pendulum motion at a very much larger scale and summarises the main control problem that is likely to be encountered in a fully deployed momentum exchange propulsion tether operating in space. The paper discusses the general mathematical issues that pertain to pendulum motion in each of the three cases. This motion is investigated initially in the context of the mobile gantry crane, in the form of a basic three dimensional dynamical model. A feedback linearised controller is shown to offer some advantages for the control of such a system and then a simulation based on data from a practical implementation of this within a real-time control system on a 1/10 laboratory scale model is discussed. It is recalled that the real-time effectiveness of the controller can be compromised by relatively slow sensing and data logging hardware but that despite this some useful performance gains can still be obtainable using this sort of control strategy. The second example comprises an autoparametric vibration absorber and here it is shown how even a simple hunting controller can exploit the mode-locking and wide detuning region effects inherent in autoparametric systems. Further experimental results are discussed in the case of a hunting controller for detuning a vertically oriented parametrically excited pendulum in order to exploit and enhance the powerful and persistent absorption available during autoparametric interaction. The paper concludes with a summary review of the third problem in which the theoretical attitude dynamics of a motorised momentum exchange space propulsion tether are summarised and it is shown that they need to be controlled for reliable and optimal payload velocity boost from both circular parking orbits and elliptical transfer orbits about the Earth.     

Dynamic response of tower crane induced by the pendulum motion of the payload

Dynamic response of tower cranes coupled with the pendulum motions of the payload is studied in this paper. A simple perturbation scheme and the assumption of small pendulum angle are applied to simplify the governing equation. The tower crane is modeled by the finite element method, while the pendulum motion is represented as rigid-body kinetics. Integrated governing equations for the coupled dynamics problem are derived based on Lagrange’s equations including the dissipation function. Dynamics of a real luffing crane model with the spherical and planar pendulum motions is analyzed using the proposed formulations and computational method. It is found that the dynamic responses of the tower crane are dominated by both the first few natural frequencies of crane structure and the pendulum motion of the payload. The dynamic amplification factors generally increase with the increase of the initial pendulum angle and the changes are just slightly nonlinear for the planar pendulum motion.     

Rotary motion of the parametric and planar pendulum under stochastic wave excitation

In this paper a rotary motion of a pendulum subjected to a parametric and planar excitation of its pivot mimicking random nature of sea waves has been studied. The vertical motion of the sea surface has been modelled and simulated as a stochastic process, based on the Shinozuka approach and using the spectral representation of the sea state proposed by Pierson–Moskowitz model. It has been investigated how the number of wave frequency components used in the simulation can be reduced without the loss of accuracy and how the model relates to the real data. The generated stochastic wave has been used as an excitation to the pendulum system in numerical and experimental studies. For the first time, the rotary response of a pendulum under stochastic wave excitation has been studied. The rotational number has been used for statistical analysis of the results in the numerical and experimental studies. It has been demonstrated how the forcing arrangement affects the probability of rotation of the parametric pendulum.     

A modified Gaussian moment closure method for nonlinear stochastic differential equations

Parametric excitation of a nonlinear physical pendulum by modulation of its moment of inertia is analyzed in terms of physics as an example of the suggested approach. The modulation is provided by a redistribution of auxiliary masses. The system is investigated both analytically and with the help of computer simulations. The threshold and other characteristics of parametric resonance are found and discussed in detail. The role of nonlinear properties of the physical system in restricting the resonant swinging is emphasized. Phase locking between the drive and oscillations of the pendulum and the phenomenon of parametric autoresonance are investigated. The boundaries of parametric instability are determined as functions of the modulation depth and the quality factor. The feedback providing active optimal control of amplification and attenuation of oscillations is analyzed. An effective method of suppressing undesirable rotary oscillations of suspended constructions is suggested.     

Oscillations of a body filled with a viscous fluid

The oscillations of a physical pendulum containing a spherical cavity filled with an incompressible viscous liquid were discussed in [1]. In this paper we consider the mote general problem of the motion of an axially symmetric solid with a spherical cavity filled with an incompressible viscous fluid and moving about a fixed point. It is assumed that the center of the cavity and the fixed point lie on the axis of symmetry of the body.     

Dynamics of a mass–spring–pendulum system with vastly different frequencies

We investigate the dynamics of a simple pendulum coupled to a horizontal mass?Cspring system. The spring is assumed to have a very large stiffness value such that the natural frequency of the mass?Cspring oscillator, when uncoupled from the pendulum, is an order of magnitude larger than that of the oscillations of the pendulum. The leading order dynamics of the autonomous coupled system is studied using the method of Direct Partition of Motion (DPM), in conjunction with a rescaling of fast time in a manner that is inspired by the WKB method. We particularly study the motions in which the amplitude of the motion of the harmonic oscillator is an order of magnitude smaller than that of the pendulum. In this regime, a pitchfork bifurcation of periodic orbits is found to occur for energy values larger that a critical value. The bifurcation gives rise to nonlocal periodic and quasi-periodic orbits in which the pendulum oscillates about an angle between zero and ??/2 from the down right position. The bifurcating periodic orbits are nonlinear normal modes of the coupled system and correspond to fixed points of a Poincare map. An approximate expression for the value of the new fixed points of the map is obtained. These formal analytic results are confirmed by comparison with numerical integration.     

Small oscillations of a liquid in a partitioned cylindrical vessel

The equations of motion of a rigid body whose cavity is partially filled with an ideal fluid have been obtained in works of Moiseev [1, 2, 3], Okhotsimskii [4], Narimanov [5], and Rabinovich [6]. All the equation coefficients have been calculated for a cavity in the form of a circular cylinder or two concentric cylinders.The problem of fluid motion in a partitioned cylindrical cavity was considered by Rabinovich [7]. It was also considered by Bauer [8], who analyzed the particular case of vessel motion in the plane of one of the partitions.In the following we consider the two-dimensional motion of a cylinder with radial and annular baffles, and a definition is given of the velocity potential in the case of arbitrary positioning of the radial baffles with respect to the motion plane. Formulas are obtained for determining the parameters of a mechanical analog of the wave oscillations, which consists of two mathematical pendulum subsystems.     

Dynamic response of the spherical pendulum subjected to horizontal Lissajous excitation

Nonlinear Dynamics - This paper examines the oscillations of a spherical pendulum with horizontal Lissajous excitation. The pendulum has two degrees of freedom: a rotational angle defined in the...     

Stability of the stationary motion of a spherical pendulum interacting with a string

The equation of motion of a spherical pendulum suspended at some point of a horizontal string is derived using a hybrid model of this mechanical system. The conditions for the asymptotic stability of the stationary motion of the spherical pendulum interacting with the elastic string are established     

Stability of the stationary motion of a double pendulum interacting with a string

The equation of in-plane vertical motion of a double pendulum suspended at some point of a horizontal elastic string is derived using a hybrid model of this mechanical system. The conditions for the asymptotic stability of the stationary motion of the pendulum interacting with the string are established     

Complete integrability of the equations of motion of a spatial pendulum in a medium flow with rotational derivatives of the torque produced by the medium taken into account

We construct a nonlinearmodel of the mediumaction on a rigid body taking into account the dependence of the force arm on the reduced angular velocity of the body. In this case, the moment of the action force itself is also a function of the angle of attack. As experimental data processing for the motion of homogeneous circular cylinders in water has shown, it is necessary to take these facts into account in modeling.Studying the model of interaction between the spatial pendulum and the medium, we found a new case of complete integrability in elementary functions. This allowed us to find several qualitative analogies between the motions of bodies that are free in the resisting environment and the oscillations of bodies partially fixed in the homogeneous flow of incoming medium.     

On the Chaotic Dynamics of a Spherical Pendulum with a Harmonically Vibrating Suspension

The equations of motion for a lightly damped spherical pendulum are considered. The suspension point is harmonically excited in both vertical and horizontal directions. The equations are approximated in the neighborhood of resonance by including the third order terms in the amplitude. The stability of equilibrium points of the modulation equations in a four-dimensional space is studied. The periodic orbits of the spherical pendulum without base excitations are revisited via the Jacobian elliptic integral to highlight the role played by homoclinic orbits. The homoclinic intersections of the stable and unstable manifolds of the perturbed spherical pendulum are investigated. The physical parameters leading to chaotic solutions in terms of the spherical angles are derived from the vanishing Melnikov–Holmes–Marsden (MHM) integral. The existence of real zeros of the MHM integral implies the possible chaotic motion of the harmonically forced spherical pendulum as a result from the transverse intersection between the stable and unstable manifolds of the weakly disturbed spherical pendulum within the regions of investigated parameters. The chaotic motion of the modulation equations is simulated via the 4th-order Runge–Kutta algorithms for certain cases to verify the analysis.     

Experimental Investigation of Dynamics and Bifurcations of an Impacting Spherical Pendulum

Since Newton first considered the motion of a spherical pendulum over 200 years ago, many researchers have studied its dynamic response under a variety of conditions. The characteristic of the problem that has invited so much investigation was that a spherical pendulum paradigms much more complex phenomena. Understanding the response of a paradigm gives an almost multiplicative effect in the understanding of other phenomena that can be modeled as a variant of the paradigm. The spherical pendulum has been used to damp irregular motion in helicopters and on space stations as well as for many other applications. In this study an inverted impacting spherical pendulum with large deflection was investigated. The model was designed to approximate an ideal pendulum, with the pendulum bob contributing the vast majority of the mass moment of inertia of the system. Two types of bearing mechanisms and tracking devices were designed for the system, one of which had low damping coefficient and the other with a relatively high damping coefficient. An experimental investigation was performed to determine the dynamics of an inverted, impacting spherical pendulum with large deflection and vertical parametric forcing. The pendulum system was studied with nine different bobs and two different base configurations. During the experiments, the frequency of the excitation remained between 24.6 and 24.9 Hz. It was found that sustained conical motions did not naturally occur. The spherical pendulum system was analyzed to determine under what conditions the onset of Type I response (a repetitive motion in which the pendulum bob does not traverse through the apex. The bob strikes the same general area of the restraint without striking the opposite side of the restraint.), sustainable Type II response (this is the repetitive motion in which the pendulum bob traverses through the apex. The bob strikes opposite sides of the restraint.), and mixed mode response (motion in which the pendulum bob randomly strikes either the same area of the restrain or the opposite side of the restraint) occurred.     

Open-plus-closed-loop control for chaotic motion of 3D rigid pendulum

An open-plus-closed-loop （OPCL） control problem for the chaotic motion of a 3D rigid pendulum subjected to a constant gravitationM force is studied. The 3D rigid pendulum is assumed to be consist of a rigid body supported by a fixed and frictionless pivot with three rotational degrees. In order to avoid the singular phenomenon of Euler＇s angular velocity equation, the quaternion kinematic equation is used to describe the motion of the 3D rigid pendulum. An OPCL controller for chaotic motion of a 3D rigid pendulum at equilibrium position is designed. This OPCL controller contains two parts： the open-loop part to construct an ideal trajectory and the closed-loop part to stabilize the 3D rigid pendulum. Simulation results show that the controller is effective and efficient.