| Abstract: | Experimental evidence for chaotic vibrations of a hanging tube with a rigid cylindrical end weight attached is presented. A series of end-mass weights is examined. Bifurcations subsequent to the initial flutter instability result in a variety of complex motions in various domains of the parameter space. The system generically follows a quasi-periodic route to chaos. The data for one particular case is examined in some detail, documenting the quasi-periodic route to chaos with delay-embedding reconstructions of the attractors, dimension calculations and spectral analyses. |
