Multi-pulse chaotic dynamics of non-autonomous nonlinear system for a honeycomb sandwich plate

The global bifurcations and multi-pulse chaotic dynamics of a simply supported honeycomb sandwich rectangular plate under combined parametric and transverse excitations are investigated in this paper for the first time. The extended Melnikov method is generalized to investigate the multi-pulse chaotic dynamics of the non-autonomous nonlinear dynamical system. The main theoretical results and the formulas are obtained for the extended Melnikov method of the non-autonomous nonlinear dynamical system. The nonlinear governing equation of the honeycomb sandwich rectangular plate is derived by using the Hamilton’s principle and the Galerkin’s approach. A two-degree-of-freedom non-autonomous nonlinear equation of motion is obtained. It is known that the less simplification processes on the system will result in a better understanding of the behaviors of the multi-pulse chaotic dynamics for high-dimensional nonlinear systems. Therefore, the extended Melnikov method of the non-autonomous nonlinear dynamical system is directly utilized to analyze the global bifurcations and multi-pulse chaotic dynamics of the two-degree-of-freedom non-autonomous nonlinear system for the honeycomb sandwich rectangular plate. The theoretical results obtained here indicate that multi-pulse chaotic motions can occur in the honeycomb sandwich rectangular plate. Numerical simulation is also employed to find the multi-pulse chaotic motions of the honeycomb sandwich rectangular plate. It also demonstrates the validation of the theoretical prediction.