Chaos in a one-dimensional compressible flow

We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional discrete flow with open boundaries—a series of moving point particles connected by ideal springs. These particles flow towards an inlet at constant velocity, pass into a region where they are free to move according to their nearest neighbor interactions, and then pass an outlet where they travel with a sinusoidally varying velocity. As the amplitude of the outlet oscillations is increased, we find that the resident time of particles in the chamber follows a bifurcating (Feigenbaum) route to chaos. This irregular dynamics may be related to the complex behavior of many particle discrete flows or is possibly a low-dimensional analogue of nonstationary flow in continuous systems.