A new piecewise linear Chen system of fractional-order: Numerical approximation of stable attractors**Dedicated to Professor Chen Guan-Rong on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

Abstract

In this paper we present a new version of Chen’s system: a piecewise linear (PWL) Chen system of fractional-order. Via a sigmoid-like function, the discontinuous system is transformed into a continuous system. By numerical simulations, we reveal chaotic behaviors and also multistability, i.e., the existence of small parameter windows where, for some fixed bifurcation parameter and depending on initial conditions, coexistence of stable attractors and chaotic attractors is possible. Moreover, we show that by using an algorithm to switch the bifurcation parameter, the stable attractors can be numerically approximated.