Further Results on Strict Lyapunov Functions for Rapidly Time-Varying Nonlinear Systems

We explicitly construct global strict Lyapunov functions for rapidly time-varying nonlinear control systems. The Lyapunov functions we construct are expressed in terms of oftentimes more readily available Lyapunov functions for the limiting dynamics which we assume are uniformly globally asymptotically stable. This leads to new sufficient conditions for uniform global exponential, uniform global asymptotic, and input-to-state stability of fast time-varying dynamics. We also construct strict Lyapunov functions for our systems using a strictification approach. We illustrate our results using a friction control example.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figues, revised and accepted for publication as a regular paper in Automatica in May 2006. To appear in October 2006 issu

Further Results on Lyapunov Functions for Slowly Time-Varying Systems

We provide general methods for explicitly constructing strict Lyapunov functions for fully nonlinear slowly time-varying systems. Our results apply to cases where the given dynamics and corresponding frozen dynamics are not necessarily exponentially stable. This complements our previous Lyapunov function constructions for rapidly time-varying dynamics. We also explicitly construct input-to-state stable Lyapunov functions for slowly time-varying control systems. We illustrate our findings by constructing explicit Lyapunov functions for a pendulum model, an example from identification theory, and a perturbed friction model.Comment: Accepted for publication in Mathematics of Control, Signals, and Systems (MCSS) on November 20, 200

Stability Criteria for SIS Epidemiological Models under Switching Policies

We study the spread of disease in an SIS model. The model considered is a time-varying, switched model, in which the parameters of the SIS model are subject to abrupt change. We show that the joint spectral radius can be used as a threshold parameter for this model in the spirit of the basic reproduction number for time-invariant models. We also present conditions for persistence and the existence of periodic orbits for the switched model and results for a stochastic switched model

Violation of hyperbolicity via unstable dimension variability in a chain with local hyperbolic chaotic attractors

We consider a chain of oscillators with hyperbolic chaos coupled via diffusion. When the coupling is strong the chain is synchronized and demonstrates hyperbolic chaos so that there is one positive Lyapunov exponent. With the decay of the coupling the second and the third Lyapunov exponents approach zero simultaneously. The second one becomes positive, while the third one remains close to zero. Its finite-time numerical approximation fluctuates changing the sign within a wide range of the coupling parameter. These fluctuations arise due to the unstable dimension variability which is known to be the source for non-hyperbolicity. We provide a detailed study of this transition using the methods of Lyapunov analysis.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure

Integral MRAC with Minimal Controller Synthesis and bounded adaptive gains: The continuous-time case

Model reference adaptive controllers designed via the Minimal Control Synthesis (MCS) approach are a viable solution to control plants affected by parameter uncertainty, unmodelled dynamics, and disturbances. Despite its effectiveness to impose the required reference dynamics, an apparent drift of the adaptive gains, which can eventually lead to closed-loop instability or alter tracking performance, may occasionally be induced by external disturbances. This problem has been recently addressed for this class of adaptive algorithms in the discrete-time case and for square-integrable perturbations by using a parameter projection strategy [1]. In this paper we tackle systematically this issue for MCS continuous-time adaptive systems with integral action by enhancing the adaptive mechanism not only with a parameter projection method, but also embedding a s-modification strategy. The former is used to preserve convergence to zero of the tracking error when the disturbance is bounded and L2, while the latter guarantees global uniform ultimate boundedness under continuous L8 disturbances. In both cases, the proposed control schemes ensure boundedness of all the closed-loop signals. The strategies are numerically validated by considering systems subject to different kinds of disturbances. In addition, an electrical power circuit is used to show the applicability of the algorithms to engineering problems requiring a precise tracking of a reference profile over a long time range despite disturbances, unmodelled dynamics, and parameter uncertainty.Postprint (author's final draft