ON THE BEHAVIOR OF A SELF-EXCITING FARADAY DISK HOMOPOLAR DYNAMO WITH A VARIABLE NONLINEAR SERIES MOTOR

Abstract

In this paper we seek to bridge the gap between the study of a self-exciting Faraday disk homopolar dynamo with a linear series motor [Hide et al., 1996] and the case when the torque acting on the armature of the motor is proportional to the square of the current flowing through the dynamo [Hide, 1998]. We also focus on the issue of when the nonlinear quenching of oscillatory solutions can occur. The present study is a special case of the more general problem when azimuthal eddy currents are permitted to flow [Moroz & Hide, 2000] and shares with that problem the existence of multiple steady states and Hopf bifurcations. This results in distinct double-zero bifurcations for the trivial and the nontrivial equilibrium states as well as other codimension-two bifurcations, which leads to the suppression of oscillatory solutions.