A transverse spinning double pendulum

A transverse spinning double pendulum is introduced. This pendulum is of interest as a simple mechanical system with two degrees of freedom with rotation which is autonomous. In addition to having physical origins, the pendulum is constructable for experimental observation. Our main interest in introducing and analyzing this system is that it is the simplest physical system with the codimension two singularity – in the linearization about the trivial solution – associated with coalescence of four zero eigenvalues. It is the dynamics of the nonlinear system in the neighbourhood of this singularity that is of interest. We study this problem using normal form theory. An algorithm for the Cushman–Sanders normal form is constructed and analyzed. A representative model for the truncated normal form is presented. This truncated normal form has seven parameters; it is not integrable in general and it is predicted that the dynamics associated with this model will be quite complex.