Narrow Results

The plane dynamics of a rigid block simply supported on a harmonically moving rigid ground is a problem which still needs investigating, although the matter has been the subject of much research since the last century. Unilateral contacts, Coulomb friction and impacts make the system hybrid as it reveals a mixed continuous and discontinuous nature. Thus, stability analysis requires the extension and adaptation of concepts with regard to variational-perturbative procedures. In particular, discontinuous systems exhibit discontinuities or "saltations" in the fundamental solution matrix which must be analyzed carefully. In this paper, the adaptation of numerical methods that permit us to obtain characteristic multipliers and Lyapunov's exponents for the rocking mode of the block will be tackled. Analytical methods are used for the linearized equations of motion; the results are compared with those in the scientific literature.

The transition from periodicity to chaos in a DC-DC Buck power converter is studied in this paper. The converter is controlled through a direct Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) in order to regulate the error dynamics at zero. Results show robustness with low output error and a fixed switching frequency. Furthermore, some rich dynamics appear as the constant associated with the first-order error dynamics decreases. Finally, a transition from periodicity to chaos is observed. This paper describes this transition and the bifurcations in the converter. Chaos appears in the system with a stretching and folding mechanism. It can be observed in the one-dimensional Poincaré map of the inductor current. This Poincaré map converges to a tent map with the variation of the system parameter k_s.

This paper proposes a strategy for the classification of codimension-two discontinuity-induced bifurcations of limit cycles in piecewise smooth systems of ordinary differential equations. Such nonsmooth transitions (also known as C-bifurcations) occur when the cycle interacts with a discontinuity boundary of phase space in a nongeneric way, such as grazing contact. Several such codimension-one events have recently been identified, causing for example, period-adding or sudden onset of chaos. Here, the focus is on codimension-two grazings that are local in the sense that the dynamics can be fully described by an appropriate Poincaré map from a neighborhood of the grazing point (or points) of the critical cycle to itself. It is proposed that codimension-two grazing bifurcations can be divided into three distinct types: either the grazing point is degenerate, or the grazing cycle is itself degenerate (e.g. nonhyperbolic) or we have the simultaneous occurrence of two grazing events. A careful distinction is drawn between their occurrence in systems with discontinuous states, discontinuous vector fields, or that with discontinuity in some derivative of the vector field. Examples of each kind of bifurcation are presented, mostly derived from mechanical applications. For each example, where possible, principal bifurcation curves characteristic to the codimension-two scenario are presented and general features of the dynamics discussed. Many avenues for future research are opened.

The competitive threshold linear networks have been recently developed and are typical examples of nonsmooth systems that can be easily constructed. Due to their flexibility for manipulation, they are used in several applications, but their dynamics (both local and global) are not completely understood. In this work, we take some recently developed threshold systems and by a simple modification in the parameter space, we obtain new global dynamic behavior. Heteroclinic cycles and other remarkable scenarios of global bifurcation are reported.