Characterising the dynamic behaviour of two-well oscillators excited at low frequency: Numerical insights

Abstract

It is shown in this paper that the harmonically excited two-well bistable oscillator, for which the excitation frequency is definitionally low, exhibits bursting oscillations for low values of damping and relaxation oscillations for high damping values. It is also shown that the region for mixed-mode oscillations can extend for increasing value of the nonlinear coefficient. The paper examines the thresholding cases for transitions between such regimes by means of bifurcation analysis within a parametric study specifically designed to prioritise the phenomenology present at low excitation frequencies.