The Reversal and Chaotic Attractor in the Nonholonomic Model of Chaplygin’s Top

In this paper we consider the motion of a dynamically asymmetric unbalanced ball on a plane in a gravitational field. The point of contact of the ball with the plane is subject to a nonholonomic constraint which forbids slipping. The motion of the ball is governed by the nonholonomic reversible system of 6 differential equations. In the case of arbitrary displacement of the center of mass of the ball the system under consideration is a nonintegrable system without an invariant measure. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis we show that the unbalanced ball exhibits reversal (the phenomenon of reversal of the direction of rotation) for some parameter values. Moreover, by constructing charts of Lyaponov exponents we find a few types of strange attractors in the system, including the so-called figure-eight attractor which belongs to the genuine strange attractors of pseudohyperbolic type.