We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional discrete flow with open boundaries
- a series of moving point particles connected by ideal springs. These
particles flow towards an inlet at constant velocity, pass into a region where
they are free to move according to their nearest neighbor interactions, and
then pass an outlet where they travel with a sinusoidally varying velocity. As
the amplitude of the outlet oscillations is increased, we find that the
resident time of particles in the chamber follows a bifurcating (Feigenbaum)
route to chaos. This irregular dynamics may be related to the complex behavior
of many particle discrete flows or is possibly a low-dimensional analogue of
non-stationary flow in continuous systems.