Local and global bifurcations in an SIRS epidemic model

This paper studies the existence and stability of the disease-free equilibrium and endemic equilibria for the SIRS epidemic model with the saturated incidence rate, considering the factor of population dynamics such as the disease-related, the natural mortality and the constant recruitment of population. Analytical techniques are used to show, for some parameter values, the periodic solutions can arise through the Hopf bifurcation, which is important to carry different strategies for the controlling disease. Then the codimension-two bifurcation, i.e. BT bifurcation, is investigated by using a global qualitative method and the curves of saddle-node bifurcation, Hopf bifurcation and homoclinic bifurcation are obtained at the degenerate equilibrium. Moreover, several numerical simulations are given to support the theoretical analysis.