Degenerate Hopf Bifurcations in Discontinuous Planar Systems

We study the stability of a singular point for planar discontinuous differential equations with a line of discontinuities. This is done, for the most generic cases, by computing some kind of Lyapunov constants. Our computations are based on the so called (R,θ,p,q)-generalized polar coordinates, introduced by Lyapunov, and they are essentially different from the ones used in the smooth case. These Lyapunov constants are also used to generate limit cycles for some concrete examples. © 2001 Academic Press.