Universal nonlinear phenomena in a class of electronic oscillators

Transitions to chaos in one-dimensional maps are known to occur in a universal fashion. This transition can be described symbolically by a sequence of words known as the U-sequence. In this work we investigate the appearance of this U-sequence in a class of electronic oscillators that describe the dynamics of electrostatic vibration energy harvesters. We show how the method of symbolic dynamics is applied to systems described by ODEs and further, we investigate why the U-sequence is not fully followed by this class of oscillators that contain a non-conservative damping force.