Visualization of stable manifolds and multidimensional surfaces in the analysis of power system dynamics (Q1974563)

This paper is concerned with the visualization of stable manifolds around a fixed point in high dimensional dynamical systems. Although the approach proposed by the authors applies to stable manifolds around hyperbolic fixed points of vector fields defined by smooth differential equations, they focus their attention in classical power systems composed of generators, electrical transformers, etc. in which the stable manifold determines the safe operating regions of the system. The main tools considered in this study are the standard reduction to normal forms as well as the consideration of energy surfaces approximating the stable manifolds together with a high dimensional graphics package XGobi developed by one of the authors [\textit{D. Swayne, D. Cook} and \textit{A. Buja}, XGobi: Interactive Dynamic Graphics in the XWindow System. J. Comput. Graphical Stat. 4, No. 3, 155-172 (1995)]. This package uses the grand tour method for visualizing the system and provides views of the object from all possible sides by performing a sequence of projections of the object space onto a two dimensional viewing space. Finally to illustrate the approach some pictures of second order approximation and the energy function approximation of the stability boundary of a power system of order six are presented.