Experimental evidence of non-standard bifurcations in non-smooth oscillator dynamics

Analytical and experimental investigations are performed in order to characterize the dynamic behaviour of a non-smooth rotational oscillator, which exhibits multiple discontinuity boundaries in the phase space. The physical system consists of a rotating body subjected to an elastic restoring force and in contact with one or two rough discs rotating with constant driving velocities. The presence of multiple discontinuity boundaries caused by frictional contacts leads to non-standard bifurcations that are studied by means of a simple mechanical model. A test set-up has then been built to investigate the correctness of modelling of the friction force and the validity of the proposed model for technical applications: the experimental measurements qualitatively and quantitatively capture the basic scenarios anticipated by the model while a strong robustness of the phenomena pointed out by the theoretical analyses has been revealed in the experiments.