Detection of grazing orbits and incident bifurcations of a forced continuous, piecewise-linear oscillator

A critical phenomenon in a continuous, piecewise-linear oscillator subjected to periodic excitation is considered, in which a periodic orbit happens to graze a switching plane between two linear regions of the oscillator at zero velocity. The analysis shows that if the piecewise linearity of the oscillator changes dramatically on the switching plane, the phenomenon turns the stability trend of the periodic orbit so abruptly that it may be hard to predict an incident bifurcation, although it is of a local type, according to the concepts of smooth dynamical systems. To detect the critical phenomenon induced by the non-smooth nature of the oscillator, a numerical scheme of searching for all periodic grazing orbits is presented, as well as a test function for grazing phenomena in tracing a branch of a periodic orbit. There follows a numerical simulation based on the scheme and the test function, which reveals an abundance of grazing phenomena and incident bifurcations of the oscillator.