2016/03/03 by Roberto da Silva, da Silva, Roberto, Sandra D. Prado +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Classical Physics (physics.class-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #physics.class-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1603.01261
arxiv created 2016/03/03 · arxiv updated 2016/03/07
In this paper, we explore the stability of an inverted pendulum under a generalized parametric excitation described by a superposition of N cosines with different amplitudes and frequencies, based on a simple stability condition that does not require any use of Lyapunov exponent, for example. Our analysis is separated in 3 different cases: N=1, N=2, and N very large. Our results were obtained via numerical simulations by fourth-order Runge Kutta integration of the non-linear equations. We also calculate the effective potential also for N>2. We show then that numerical integrations recover a wider region of stability that are not captured by the (approximated) analytical method. We also analyze stochastic stabilization here: firstly, we look the effects of external noise in the stability diagram by enlarging the variance, and secondly, when N is large, we rescale the amplitude by showing that the diagrams for time survival of the inverted pendulum resembles the exact case for N=1. Finally, we find numerically the optimal number of cosines corresponding to the maximal survival probability of the pendulum.