Bifurcations caused by grazing incidence in many degrees of freedom impact oscillators

The transition from stable periodic non-impacting motion to impacting motion is analysed for a mechanical oscillator. By using local methods, it is shown that a grazing impact leads to an almost one-dimensional stretching in state space. A condition can then be formulated, such that a grazing trajectory will be stable if the condition is fulfilled. If this is the case, the bifurcation will be continuous and the motion after the bifurcation can be understood by a one-dimensional mapping. This mapping is known to exhibit chaotic solutions as well as arbitrary long stable cycles, depending on parameters.