Signal processing of chaotic impacting series

Impact dynamics is considered to be one of the most important problems which arise in mechanical vibrating systems. Such impacting may occur in the motion of oscillators with amplitude constraining stops. Different types of impacting response due to different ranges of driving frequency or control parameters can be predicted from bifurcation diagrams. In practice the impacting signals normally cannot be measured directly from the impacting sources. In other words, the original impacting signals are “filtered” by linear or nonlinear substructures with unknown measurement noise. We focus on the signal processing of the observed impacting signals which is recorded from the experimental model in the chaotic region. We review the theoretical model of simple impacting systems and the problems we are facing. The experimental model is described and the observed impacting series are introduced. Data analysis is described, and the two stages of the signal processing (a) blind deconvolution and optimisation of the observed data, and (b) Lyapunov exponents and noise reduction, are discussed