Sustained chaos and control by means of weak periodic excitations: application to a class of nonlinear electronic systems

The problem of homoclinic chaos enhancement by means of weak periodic perturbations is studied for a broad class of dissipative nonautonomous systems subjected to two harmonic excitations (one of them chaos inducing). Theoretical results are derived from the basis of Melnikov's analysis. Analytical expressions for optimal values of initial phase differences between excitations in order to obtain an optimal chaos-inducing situation are derived. Robustness to noise is experimentally proved by the application of this technique in the induction of chaos in a nonlinear electronic circuit.