Conservative Chaos in a Class of Nonconservative Systems: Theoretical Analysis and Numerical Demonstrations
This paper proposes a class of nonlinear systems and presents one example system to illustrate its interesting dynamics, including quasiperiodic motion and chaos. It is found that the example system is a subsystem of a non-Hamiltonian system, which has a continuous curve of equilibria with time-reversal symmetry. In this study, the dynamical evolution of the example system with three different kinds of external excitations are fully investigated by using general chaotic analysis methods such as Poincaré sections, phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents and bifurcation diagrams. Both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the example system is nonconservative but has conservative chaotic flows, which are numerically verified by the sum of its Lyapunov exponents. It is also found that the example system has time-reversal symmetry.