Experimental Investigation of Nonplanar Chaotic Vibrations in a Cantilever Beam With Vertical Base Excitation

The experimental results of the nonlinear nonplanar periodic and chaotic vibrations are demonstrated for a cantilever beam with square cross-section under harmonic vertical base excitation. It is illustrated that this simple system can exhibit complicated dynamics, including periodic doubling bifurcation and chaotic motion. The experimental results also indicate that there indeed exist the multi-pulse Shilnikov type chaotic motions for the nonlinear nonplanar oscillations of the cantilever beam in three-dimensional phase space. It is verified that the phenomena of the multi-pulse Shilnikov type jumping orbits detected by the theoretical analysis indeed exist in the nonplanar nonlinear motion of the cantilever beam subjected to a harmonic vertical base excitation at the fixed end.