Smooth and nonsmooth tangencies in a gear model with impacts.

In this paper we analyse a dynamical system corresponding to a model of gear rattle. We highlight some of the rich dynamics that can be found in the vicinity of both smooth and nonsmooth bifurcations. In particular, we are interested in two completely different mechanisms in which the same chaotic attractor disappears, namely, through a grazing bifurcation and a homoclinic tangency.