The damping term makes the Smale-horseshoe heteroclinic chaotic motion easier

The nonlinear Rayleigh damping term that is introduced to the classical parametrically excited pendulum makes the parametrically excited pendulum more complex and interesting. The effect of the nonlinear damping term on the new excitable systems is investigated based on analytical techniques such as Melnikov theory. The threshold conditions for the occurrence of Smale-horseshoe chaos of this deterministic system are obtained. Compared with the existing conclusion, i.e. the smaller the damping term is, the easier the chaotic motions become when the damping term is linear, our analysis, however, finds that the smaller or the larger the damping term is, the easier the Smale-horseshoe heteroclinic chaotic motions become. Moreover, the bifurcation diagram and the patterns of attractors in Poincare map are studied carefully. The results demonstrate the new system exhibits rich dynamical phenomena: periodic motions, quasi-periodic motions and even chaotic motions. Importantly, according to the property of transitive as well as the fractal layers for a chaotic attractor, we can verify whether a attractor is a quasi-periodic one or a chaotic one when the maximum lyapunov exponent method is difficult to distinguish. Numerical simulations confirm the analytical predictions and show that the transition from regular to chaotic motion.