Analysis of chaotic saddles in a nonlinear vibro-impact system

•The improved stagger-and-step method is proposed to present evidence of visual chaotic saddles.•The dynamics mechanics of three types of bifurcation associated with chaotic saddle are unfolded.•The intersection of the stable and unstable manifold of the period saddle is responsible for the transitions of chaotic saddle.•Period saddles are responsible for gaps of chaotic saddle and fractal structure. In this paper, a computational investigation of chaotic saddles in a nonlinear vibro-impact system is presented. For a classical Duffing vibro-impact oscillator, we employ the bisection procedure and an improved stagger-and-step method to present evidence of visual chaotic saddles on the fractal basin boundary and in the internal basin, respectively. The results show that the period saddles play an important role in the evolution of chaotic saddle. The dynamics mechanics of three types of bifurcation such as saddle-node bifurcation, chaotic saddle crisis bifurcation and interior chaotic crisis bifurcation are discussed. The results reveal that the period saddle created at saddle-node bifurcation is responsible for the switch of the internal chaotic saddle to the boundary chaotic saddle. At chaotic saddle crisis bifurcation, a large chaotic saddle can divide into two different chaotic saddle connected by a period saddle. The intersection points between stable and unstable manifolds of this period saddle supply access for chaotic orbits from one chaotic saddle to another and eventually induce the coupling of these two chaotic saddle. Interior chaotic crisis bifurcation is associated with the intersection of stable and unstable manifolds of the period saddle connecting two chaotic invariant sets. In addition, the gaps in chaotic saddle is responsible for the fractal structure.