Chaotic and steady state behaviour of a nonlinear controlled gyro subjected to harmonic disturbances (Q2468174)

The authors study the motion of a heavy symmetrical gyro in gimbals mounted on a platform subjected to a harmonic base excitation. The gyro is used to stabilize an external body connected to the outer axis and subjected to harmonic torque disturbances. The mathematical model, deduced from the Euler-Lagrange equations, takes into account that the moments of inertia of the inner and outer rings and the equatorial moment of inertia of the rotor are not negligible. The aim of the article is to study the regular and chaotic motions of the gyro, with both harmonic platform excitation and external torque disturbances, when a nonlinear control system is used to stabilize the external body. Depending on the values of the amplitude and angular frequency of the external disturbance and the harmonic base excitation, the gyro can reach chaotic motion. The chaotic motion is analyzed by means of the chaos maps, bifurcation diagrams, sensitive dependence, Lyapunov exponents and power spectrum density. The transition from chaotic to regular motion is analyzed by rejecting both harmonic excitations and harmonic torque disturbances in the body to stabilize. When the external harmonic disturbances are compensated, in general, it is not possible to reach a prescribed equilibrium point, so a new system formed by an integrator is added to eliminate to tracking error. When the gyro has chaotic motion, and the desired set point lies inside the strange attractor, taking into account that the attractor is dense, there will always the trajectories in the phase plane very close to the set point. In this case, if the control system starts when the phase variables are close to the set point, a smaller control signal can be obtained.