Abstract. We give general conditions on given parameters to ensure Devaney and distributional chaos for the solution C 0 -semigroup corresponding to a class of second-order partial differential equations. We also provide a critical parameter that led us to distinguish between stability and chaos for these semigroups. In the case of chaos, we prove that the C 0 -semigroup admits a strongly mixing measure with full support. We also give concrete examples of partial differential equations, such as the telegraph equation, whose solutions satisfy these properties.