On the ultimate transition to chaos in the dynamics of Cooperrider's bogie

Cooperrider's mathematical model of a railway bogie running on a straight track has been thoroughly investigated due to its interesting dynamics (see True [1] for a recent survey). In this paper a detailed investigation of the ultimate transition to chaos at a very high (until now unrealistically high) speed is presented. The transition is interesting because of its sequences of bifurcations in a narrow parameter interval, which ultimately leads to chaos by type 1 intermittency, described by Pomeau and Manneville [2]. Cooperrider's bogie model is described, the method of numerical investigation is explained and the results shown. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.