Chaotic Rotations of an Asymmetric Body with Time-Dependent Moments of Inertia and Viscous Drag

We study the dynamics of a rotating asymmetric body under the influence of an aerodynamic drag. We assume that the drag torque is proportional to the angular velocity of the body. Also we suppose that one of the moments of inertia of the body is a periodic function of time and that the center of mass of the body is not modified. Under these assumptions, we show that the system exhibits a transient chaotic behavior by means of a higher dimensional generalization of the Melnikov’s method. This method give us an analytical criterion for heteroclinic chaos in terms of the system parameters. These analytical results are confirmed by computer numerical simulations of the system rotations.