Application of the subharmonic Melnikov method to piecewise-smooth systems (Q1948796)

Piecewise-smooth systems arise in many engineering and physical phenomena and the mathematical community pays attention to these systems due to their interesting features which are not typical for smooth systems. Here, as a prolongation of previous results of the author (1996--2007), the extended subharmonic Melnikov method is developed for the study of the existence of periodic orbits, their saddle-node bifurcations, stability and degenerate resonance behavior via approximation of solutions to piecewise-smooth systems by those of smooth ones with applications to bi- and trilinear oscillators. The analytic results are compared with numerical ones via AUTO-97 for both oscillators.