DYNAMICS OF IMPACT OSCILLATOR WITH DRY FRICTION

Our investigations of the dynamics of a simple mechanical system show that (i) the structure of the bifurcation diagram seems to be independ ent of the friction models, and (ii) small changes of Experimentally e stimated parameters like friction and restitution coefficients (within the error of estimation) can lead to significant qualitative changes in the system's dynamics. The last observation shows that for such sys tems it is very difficult (if not impossible) to build mathematical mo dels which can qualitatively describe experimental results for all pos sible values of system parameters. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.