Existence of periodic orbits of stable saturated systems

The saturation of linear controllers produces the undesirable existence of equilibrium points or periodic orbits of the closed-loop system. This typical nonlinear behavior has been observed in real systems or by means of simulation of certain examples. However, there are only a few studies in which the properties of saturated systems have been examined rigorously and, a proof of the existence of periodic orbits created by the saturation of the controller is lacking. In this paper we choose an example of an open-loop stable linear control system with an stabilizing saturated linear feedback to prove rigorously the existence of a periodic orbit. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.