Delay-Induced Bogdanov-Takens Bifurcation and Dynamical Classifications in a Slow-Fast Flexible Joint System

A slow-fast delay-coupled flexible joint system is investigated in this paper. To understand the effects of time delay on the stability and oscillation of the manipulator, the geometric singular perturbation method is extended in dealing with delay differential equations. Bogdanov-Takens (BT) bifurcation of the fast subsystem is obtained, which leads to the existence of homoclinic orbits and is proved to be related to the formation of spiking. After the break of homoclinic orbits, Melnikov theory is introduced to predict the threshold curve indicating the occurrence of chaos. Numerical results show that with the increase of time delay, the stability of the system gets worse, and complicated oscillations including bursting, chaotic-bursting and complete chaos turn up. Besides, it is briefly summarized that the effect of the small parameter in the slow-fast system is to influence the convergence rate of solution trajectories, which is widely neglected in previous works.