Generalized Hopf Bifurcation for Planar Filippov Systems Continuous at the Origin

In this paper, we study the existence of periodic orbits bifurcating from stationary solutions of a planar dynamical system of Filippov type. This phenomenon is interpreted as a generalized Hopf bifurcation. In the case of smoothness, Hopf bifurcation is characterized by a pair of complex conjugate eigenvalues crossing through the imaginary axis. This method does not carry over to nonsmooth systems, due to the lack of linearization at the origin which is located on the line of discontinuity. In fact, generalized Hopf bifurcation is determined by interactions between the discontinuity of the system and the eigen-structures of all subsystems. With the help of geometrical observations for a corresponding piecewise linear system, we derive an analytical method to investigate the existence of periodic orbits that are obtained by searching for the fixed points of return maps.