Elucidating the escape dynamics of the four hill potential

This paper treads discontinuous bifurcation in piecewise smooth systems of Filippov type. These bifurcations occur when a fixed point or a periodic orbit crosses with the border between two regions of smooth behavior. A detailed analysis of generalization Poincaré map and monodromy matrix which are related shows that subfamily of system with invariant cone-like objects is foliated by periodic orbits and determines its stability. In addition, we introduce a theoretical framework for analyzing 3D perturbed nonlinear piecewise smooth systems and give necessary conditions so that different types of bifurcations occur. The analysis identifies criteria for the existence of a novel bifurcation based on sensitively the location of the return map. Moreover, the piecewise smooth Melnikov function and sufficient conditions of the existence of the periodic orbits for nonlinear perturbed system are explicitly obtained.