Regularizing Piecewise Smooth Differential Systems: Co-Dimension 2 Discontinuity Surface

In this paper, we are concerned with numerical solution of piecewise smooth initial value problems. Of specific interest is the case when the discontinuities occur on a smooth manifold of co-dimension 2, intersection of two co-dimension 1 singularity surfaces, and which is nodally attractive for nearby dynamics. In this case of a co-dimension 2 attracting sliding surface, we will give some results relative to two prototypical time and space regularizations. We will show that, unlike the case of co-dimension 1 discontinuity surface, in the case of co-dimension 2 discontinuity surface the behavior of the regularized problems is strikingly different. On the one hand, the time regularization approach will not select a unique sliding mode on the discontinuity surface, thus maintaining the general ambiguity of how to select a Filippov vector field in this case. On the other hand, the proposed space regularization approach is not ambiguous, and there will always be a unique solution associated to the regularized vector field, which will remain close to the original co-dimension 2 surface. We will further clarify the limiting behavior (as the regularization parameter goes to 0) of the proposed space regularization to the solution associated to the sliding vector field of Dieci and Lopez (Numer Math 117:779–811, 2011). Numerical examples will be given to illustrate the different cases and to provide some preliminary exploration in the case of co-dimension 3 discontinuity surface.