Chaotic motion of a gyrostat with asymmetric rotor

In this paper, we discuss an asymmetric gyrostat with a rotor to which a ma ss point is attached, this breaks the symmetry and perturbs the integrable system periodically. We: take this system as a Euler-Poinsot motion perturb ed by a small periodic excitation, and apply the Melnikov method to determi ne the intersection of the stable and unstable manifold of the system's hyp erbolic point, since, this is the cause of chaos. We also manifest the chao tic motion in angular momentum space by the Poincare: surface of section. T he stability about the rotating axis is also showed in the portrait of the Poincare surfaces of section. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights res erved.