Controlling coexisting attractors of an impacting system via linear augmentation

This paper studies the control of coexisting attractors in an impacting system via a recently developed control law based on linear augmentation. Special attention is given to two control issues in the framework of multistable engineering systems, namely, the switching between coexisting attractors without altering the system's main parameters and the avoidance of grazing-induced chaotic responses. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is confirmed numerically for the case of a periodically excited, soft impact oscillator. Our analysis shows how path-following techniques for non-smooth systems can be used in order to determine the optimal control parameters in terms of energy expenditure due to the control signal and transient behavior of the control error, which can be applied to a broad range of engineering problems.