On the occurrence of sliding bifurcations in piecewise smooth dynamical systems

We study the occurence of an interesting class of bifurcations in piecewise smooth dynamical systems. These bifurcations, termed sliding bifurcations, are shown to be the mechanism underlying the formation of periodic solutions evolving partly within the system discontinuity set. Numerical evidence of the existence of these sliding orbits and their bifurcations is presented. A possible framework to carry out their analytical investigation is also proposed.