ON THE CHAOTIC BEHAVIOUR OF A HEAVY ELASTICA

Abstract

The chaotic behavior of a heavy elastica cantilever of uniform density and cross-section anchored on one end, is studied in this paper. The solutions describe the large deformations of elastica by superposition of nonperturbative shape solitons breathers and kinks. These solutions and called by Kälbermann the wobble solitons. The manifestations of chaos appear when the excitatory nonperturbative shape wobbles exhibit a smooth transition from a regime dominated by stationary waves to a regime of slow rate fluctuations.