Stability analysis of piecewise-affine systems using controlled invariant sets

Abstract

This paper presents new stability conditions for closed-loop piecewise-affine (PWA) systems. The result is based on controlled invariant sets for PWA systems, which are defined by extending the notion of semi-ellipsoidal invariant sets for constrained linear systems reported in previous research. The paper shows that by proper use of the control input, concatenations of semi-ellipsoidal sets can be made invariant for the trajectories of PWA systems. Furthermore, based on these controlled invariant sets, the paper presents a result for stability of a closed-loop PWA system which is less conservative than existing approaches in the literature. In this result, it is shown that a PWA system is stable inside the intersection of any level set for a local Lyapunov function and the design set where the function is defined, provided the flow points inwards at the boundaries of the intersection. This result is less conservative than previous approaches and it enables the designer to have an estimation of a much larger region of exponential stability then it would be possible using previous results. A numerical example is presented, in which it is made clear by comparison with previous approaches that the estimated region of stability can be made significantly larger using the new stability conditions developed in this paper.