Chaos Illustrations in Dynamics of Mechanisms

The paper illustrates the occurrence of chaos phenomenon when dynamic modelling of a mechanical system is performed. The equations of motion of a 2DOF physical planar pendulum are obtained and subsequently they are numerically integrated. The same system is also modelled using dedicated software. The numerical results and the ones given by the software coincide only for a short duration after launching. The paper highlights the strong dependence of the evolution of the system upon the initial conditions, confirming the existence of the chaos phenomenon. It is also revealed the connection between the accuracy of the initial conditions and the dimension of the corresponding interval.