Experimental verification of the steady-state behavior of a beam system with discontinuous support

This article deals with the experimental verification of the long-term behavior of a periodically excited linear beam supported by a one-sided spring. Numerical analysis of the beam showed subharmonic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic behavior. Further, three different routes leading to chaos were found. Because of the relative simplicity of the beam system and the variety of calculated nonlinear phenomena, an experimental setup is made of this beam system to verify the numerical results. The experimental results correspond very well with the numerical results as far as the subharmonic behavior is concerned. Measured chaotic behavior is proved to be chaotic by calculating Lyapunov exponents of experimental data.