Qualitative analysis of non-linear dynamical systems Original Research Article

Developments in non-linear dynamics have shown that a variety of non-linear deterministic systems with no random inputs can produce random-like or chaotic motions. However, much computational effort is required to identify and analyse chaotic behaviour. We present a powerful methodology to simulate and extract the qualitative behaviour of non-linear systems on a massively parallel Connection Machine. As an example, a simple physical system is analysed to show the effectiveness of the scheme. It is shown that such an analysis is important for designing robust structures.