Bifurcations and HOPF degeneracies in nonlinear feedback systems with time delay

An application of the well-developed frequency-domain approach to detect oscillations in nonlinear feedback systems with time delay is presented. The method depends on an early proof of the Hopf bifurcation theorem known as the Graphical Hopf Theorem (GHT). Several nondegeneracy conditions are included to apply the GHT in nonlinear systems with time delay. The singular conditions corresponding to degeneracies, which include static and dynamic bifurcations, as well as some special cases of degenerate Hopf bifurcations and multiple crossings, are also discussed. Two Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) feedback systems with odd nonlinearities are presented as examples to show that the proposed technique and a standard simulation method have very good agreement in the results, yet the GHT is much simpler in calculation. The first one shows an application of the GHT under classical Hopf conditions while the second emphasizes the presence of degenerate Hopf bifurcations and multiple crossings. For both examples, and others which have appeared recently in the literature, a considerable simplification of the formulas for recovering periodic solutions is also provided in this paper.