Bifurcation of periodic orbits emanated from a vertex in discontinuous planar systems

We discuss bifurcation of periodic orbits in discontinuous planar systems with discontinuities on finitely many straight lines intersecting at the origin and the unperturbed system has either a limit cycle or an annulus of periodic orbits. Assume that the unperturbed periodic orbits cross every switching line transversally exactly once. For the first case we give a condition for the persistence of the limit cycle. For the second case, we obtain the expression of the first order Melnikov function and establish sufficient conditions on the number of limit cycles bifurcate from the periodic annulus. Then we generalize our results to systems with discontinuities on finitely many smooth curves. As an application, we present a piecewise cubic system with 4 switching lines and show that the maximum number of limit cycles bifurcate from the periodic annulus can be affected by the position of the switching lines.

• Bifurcation of periodic orbits from a vertex in non-smooth systems is studied.
• The unperturbed system has either a limit cycle or a periodic annulus.
• Melnikov function is obtained to detect number of limit cycles bifurcate.
• Results are generalized to systems with discontinuities on smooth curves.