Continuation of Periodic Solutions of Dissipative and Conservative Systems Application to Elastic Pendulum.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Mathematical Problems in Engineering Volume 2009, Article ID 104547, 15 pages doi:10.1155/2009/104547 Research Article Continuation of Periodic Solutions of Dissipative and Conservative Systems: Application to Elastic Pendulum P. Pokorny Department of Mathematics, Prague Institute of Chemical Technology, Technicka 5, 166 28 Prague, Czech Republic Correspondence should be addressed to P. Pokorny, pavel.pokorny@vscht.cz Received 2 December 2008; Revised 26 January 2009; Accepted 21 February 2009 Recommended by Jose Roberto Castilho Piqueira ´ Continuation is an efficient algorithm for finding solutions of systems of nonlinear algebraic equations where the solutions form a one-dimensional continuum. Such systems arise naturally when investigating equilibrium points and periodic solutions of ordinary differential equations with one parameter. Continuation of isolated periodic solutions of dissipative systems is a well- established technique. Less attention has been devoted to continuation of periodic solutions of conservative systems, where periodic solutions typically form a one-parameter family. To specify a single periodic solution, additional condition must be considered. However, this gives an over- determined system, which has no solution when working with approximate numerical values. We propose a simple algorithm which solves this difficulty by using singular value decomposition of the Jacobian matrix. This algorithm is applied to the conservative model of elastic pendulum. A branch of periodic solutions with constant energy is found which is born by the period doubling bifurcation of vertical oscillations. Copyright q 2009 P. Pokorny. This is an open access article distributed