UC Berkeley

A topological and dynamical characterization of the stability boundaries for a fairly large class of nonlinear autonomous dynamic systems is presented. The stability boundary of a stable equilibrium point is shown to consist of the stable manifolds of all the equilibrium points (and/or closed orbits) on the stability boundary. Several necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to determine whether a given equilibrium point (or closed orbit) is on the stability boundary. A method for finding the stability region on the basis of these results is proposed. The method, when feasible, will find the exact stability region, rather than a subset of it as in the Lyapunov theory approach. Several examples are given to illustrate the theoretical prediction.