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.