Non-smooth continuation of periodic orbits in a chaotic buck converter

Mathematical models of DC-DC converters usually share the property of being non-smooth at some region of the phase space. This applies to the vector field which defines the dynamics of the orbits, and also to the associated Poincare (stroboscopic or impact) equivalent map. Thus, important problems arise in the specific situations where any characteristic of the system has to be found as a parameter is varied continuously. This applies, for example, to bifurcations, continuation of stationary orbits, and so on. In this paper, a specific method for continuation of unstable periodic orbits in a model of a PWM buck converter is proposed. It relies both on the linearity of the topologies and the non-smooth characteristics of the stroboscopic map. With this method, two branches of unstable 3T-periodic orbits are computed