Grazing and Chaos in a Periodically Forced, Piecewise Linear System

The criteria for the grazing bifurcation of a periodically forced, piecewise linear system are developed and the initial grazing manifolds are obtained. The initial grazing manifold is invariant. The grazing flows are illustrated to verify the analytic prediction of grazing. The mechanism of the strange attractors fragmentation caused by the grazing is discussed, and an illustration of the fragmentized strange attractor is given through the Poincaré mapping. This fragmentation phenomenon exists extensively in nonsmooth dynamical systems. The mathematical structure of the fragmentized strange attractors should be further developed.