Bifurcation characteristics and safe basin of MSMA microgripper subjected to stochastic excitation

A kind of magnetic shape memory alloy (MSMA) microgripper is proposed in this paper, and its nonlinear dynamic characteristics are studied when the stochastic perturbation is considered. Nonlinear differential items are introduced to explain the hysteretic phenomena of MSMA, and the constructive relationships among strain, stress, and magnetic field intensity are obtained by the partial least-square regression method. The nonlinear dynamic model of a MSMA microgripper subjected to in-plane stochastic excitation is developed. The stationary probability density function of the system’s response is obtained, the transition sets of the system are determined, and the conditions of stochastic bifurcation are obtained. The homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits of the system are given, and the boundary of the system’s safe basin is obtained by stochastic Melnikov integral method. The numerical and experimental results show that the system’s motion depends on its parameters, and stochastic Hopf bifurcation appears in the variation of the parameters; the area of the safe basin decreases with the increase of the stochastic excitation, and the boundary of the safe basin becomes fractal. The results of this paper are helpful for the application of MSMA microgripper in engineering fields.