An Elementary Analysis of Chua's Circuit

Prior to the invention of Chua's circuit by Leon Chua in 1983, it was generally believed that it was not possible to design an electronic oscillator which exhibited chaos. In this talk, we provide an overview and analysis of Chua’s chaotic circuit. Principally, we will show the nondimensionalization of the model and a bifurcation analysis for the case where all passive circuit elements have positive values. This analytical approach will be further illustrated by numerical solutions to the state equations for selected parameter values. Finally, we will compare our theoretical results with the output of a circuit simulator and also with measured results from a physical implementation of Chua's circuit. Previous experience with circuit analysis is not necessary to understand this talk.