Another possible kind of regular behaviour of the pendulum is a synchronized non-uniform unidirectional rotation in a full circle with a period that equals either the driving period or an integer multiple of this period. More complicated regular modes of the parametrically forced pendulum are formed by combined rotational and oscillatory motions synchronized (locked in phase) with oscillations of the pivot. Different competing modes can coexist at the same values of the driving amplitude and frequency. Which of these modes is eventually established when the transient is over depends on the starting conditions.
Behaviour of the pendulum whose axis is forced to oscillate with a frequency from certain intervals (and at large enough driving amplitudes) can be irregular, chaotic. Chaotic behaviour of this simple nonlinear system has been a subject of intense interest during recent decades [2] – [7]. The parametrically forced pendulum can serve as an excellent physical model for studying chaos as well as various complicated modes of regular behaviour.
An interesting feature in the behaviour of a rigid pendulum whose suspension point is forced to vibrate with a high frequency along the vertical line is the dynamic stabilization of its inverted position. When the frequency and amplitude of these vibrations are large enough, the inverted pendulum shows no tendency to turn down. Moreover, at small and moderate deviations from the vertical inverted position the pendulum tends to return to it. Being deviated, it can execute relatively slow oscillations about the vertical line on the background of rapid oscillations of the suspension point. This now well-known curiosity of classical mechanics, probably first pointed out by Stephenson [8] in 1908, has been explained physically and investigated experimentally in detail by Pjotr Kapitza [9] in 1951. Not surprisingly, since then this intriguing system has attracted attention of many researchers, and the theory of the phenomenon may seem to be well elaborated – see, for example, Landau [10]. Nevertheless, more and more new features in the behaviour of this apparently inexhaustible system are reported regularly. Further discoveries concerning general features and details in the behaviour of parametrically excited inverted pendulum have been published over the last decade [11] – [18].
Among these recent discoveries, the most important are the destabilization of the (dynamically stabilized) inverted position at large driving amplitudes through excitation of period-2 (“flutter”) oscillations (Blackburn, 1992) [11], and the existence of n-periodic “multiple-nodding” regular oscillations (Acheson, 1995) [13]. However, the authors who discovered these interesting modes have not suggested any clear physical explanation to the origin of such “flutter” oscillations, as well as to the “multiple-nodding” oscillations. In this paper we present a quite simple qualitative physical explanation to these phenomena, and indicate the regions in the parameter space where these modes can exist. We show that the period-2 mode (the “flutter” oscillation) is closely (intimately) related to the commonly known parametric instability of the non-inverted pendulum, and that the “multiple-nodding” oscillations (which exist both for the inverted and hanging down pendulums) can be treated as high order subharmonic resonances of the parametrically driven pendulum.