Discontinuous dynamical systems

Abstract

This article has presented an introductory tutorial on discontinuous dynamical systems. Various examples illustrate the pertinence of the continuity and Lipschitzness properties that guarantee the existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to ordinary differential equations. The lack of these properties in examples drawn from various disciplines motivates the need for more general notions than the classical one. First, we introduced notions of solution for discontinuous systems. Second, we reviewed the available tools from non- smooth analysis to study the gradient information of candidate Lyapunov functions. And, third, we presented nonsmooth stability tools to characterize the asymptotic behavior of solutions.