About Robust Control on Nonlinear Chaotic
Oscillators
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
mcleju@yahoo.com
Abstract—Analyzing the behavior of nonlinear oscillators has
revealed a wide range of phenomena specific to nonlinear
systems. The Duffing oscillator raises a particular interest and
has been studied frequently. Starting from a robust control
method for chaotic Duffing-Holmes type oscillators, this paper
analyzes the possibility of extending the method for other types of
Duffing oscillators, with numerical simulation results supporting
the theoretical considerations.
Keywords-component; robust control; nonlinear
oscillators; sliding mode control.
I. INTRODUCTION
Many nonlinear specific phenomena, for example jump
resonance, bifurcations and chaos, have been studied in
scientific literature via analyzing the harmonic functioning
regime of oscillators such as Duffing, Van der Pol, Bonhoeffer
–van der Pol type.
Chaos is considered to be an irregular randomly-seeming
functioning regime, strongly influenced by the system’s initial
conditions. It is encountered in the functioning of many
systems of various nature, be it electrical, chemical or
biological.
The major characteristic of the chaotic regime is its strong
dependency on the system’s initial condition, such that an
insignificant modification thereof can lead to major changes in
the state of the system. In the literature there have been
proposed many methods for chaos control: the OGY control
method, the open-plus-closed-loop method, H∞ method,
adaptive methods sliding mode control etc., [1- 4]. In [5] a
robust sliding mode control method for stabilizing chaotic
Duffing – Holmes oscillators is presented.
This paper studies the possibility of extending this method
to other types of Duffing oscillators.
II. THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Let use consider a Duffing type nonlinear oscillator with
the general mathematical model:
x + a 1 x + a 2 x + a 3 x 3 + f n ( x ) = R 1 cos ω1 t
where f n ( x ) is a nonlinear continuous function. The
mathematical model (1) characterizes a nonlinear chaotic
Mihaela Cleju
Iasi, Romania
system for certain initial conditions, certain values of the
coefficients a 1 , a 2 , a 3 and of the parameters of the harmonic
input signal R 1 , ω1 . A robust sliding mode control method,
presented in [5], starts with considering a chaotic system
described by the time-varying second-order differential
equation with disturbances and uncertainties:
chaotic x + p1 ( t ) x + p 2 ( t ) x = p( t ) (u + d ( t , x ) ) (2)
where x ∈ R represents the system state, u ∈ R is the system
input and d ( t , x ) is the disturbance or unmodeled dynamics.
The variation limits of the parameters and the perturbation
are defined by:
p m ≤ p −1 ( t ) ≤ p M , p1m ≤ p1 ( t )p −1 ( t ) ≤ p1M ,
(3)
p 2 m ≤ p 2 ( t )p −1 ( t ) ≤ p 2 M , max d ( t , t < D x
Sliding mode control methods aim to establish control laws
for guiding and maintaining the system state trajectories on a
certain commutation surface established beforehand. The
method proposed in [5] for determining a robust sliding mode
control for the Duffing – Holmes oscillator consists of two
stages.
The first stage defines a function representing a
commutation surface s; the system’s state trajectories are
guided towards it. The surface is referred to as sliding surface
because the state trajectories, once they reach it, will not leave
it anymore. In the sliding mode, system (2) behaves like a
linear system.
The second stage establishes a control law which ensures
that the system reaches and remains on this sliding surface s =
0. Let us denote as xr the desired state path. The tracking error
can be defined as:
ε = x − xr (4)
(1) and we consider the sliding surface function:
s = ε + kε (5)
where k > 0 is a positive constant.
To ensure system stability and to fulfill the sliding
condition, ss < 0 , the authors of [5] consider the system (2) as
composed of two subsystems.
The first is the nominal system for which it is desired to
establish a continuous control law, u n , and the second is the
uncertain subsystem, corresponding to the variation of the
system parameters and the perturbation, defined in (3), for
which it is desired to design a discontinuous switching control
input, u v . Thus, the command input is:
⎧+ 1, s > 0
sgn(s) = ⎨ (14)
⎩− 1, s < 0
Introducing (12)-(14) in (11) and multiplying by s one
verifies the fulfillment of the sliding condition ss < 0 , [5]. The
control laws (12)-(14) guarantee that the system state trajectory
reaches and remains on the sliding surface; moreover, to
eliminate the high frequency oscillations of the system state, it
is recommended to replace the commutation function (14)
with:

⎧ s
u = un + uv (6) ⎪1, δ ≥ 1
⎪
s ⎪s s
sat ( ) = ⎨ , − 1 < < 1 (15)
For the nominal subsystem, we consider the set of initial δ ⎪δ δ
values (p*, p *1 , p * 2 ) , where: ⎪ s
⎪− 1, δ ≤ −1
⎩
pM + pm p + p1m p + p 2m where δ is the width of the boundary layer. In this way the
p* = , p *1 = 1M , p *2 = 2M (7)
2 2 2 sliding surface function s with an arbitrary initial value will
reach and stay within the boundary layer s ≤ δ .
and for the uncertain subsystem, the triple (Δp*, Δp *1 , Δp * 2 ) :
III. SIMULATIONS RESULTS
p − pm p − p 1m
Δp* = M , Δp *1 = 1M , A. Quintic - Duffing Oscillator
2 2
(8) We consider system (1) which for f n ( x ) = 0.1x 5 represents
p − p 2m
Δp * 2 = 2 M a Quintic – Duffing Oscillator:
2

From (4), (5) we obtain: x + a 1 x + a 2 x + a 3 x 3 + 0.1x 5 = R 1 cos ω1 t (16)

s = x − x r + k (x − x r ) (9) For a 1 = 0.25, a 2 = −1, a 3 = 1, R 1 = 0.4, ω1 = 1 and the initial

whereas
s = x − x r + k (x − x r )
In these conditions, considering (2) yields:
conditions x (0) = x (0) = 2 , (16) represents a nonlinear
oscillator functioning chaotically, as results from the diagrams
presented in Fig.1, Fig.2.
(10)
If the desired trajectory of the state of the chaotic oscillator
(16) is desired to be:

x r = sin(1.1 t ) (17)
s = (k − p1 ( t ) )x − p 2 ( t ) x + p( t )u −
(11)
− x r − kx r + p( t )d( t , x )

The two command laws corresponding to the two

subsystems equivalent to system (1) are proposed to be of the
following type:

u n = (p *1 −kp *)x + p * 2 x + p * x r + kp * x r (12)

[
u v = − (Δp *1 + kΔp *) x + Δp * 2 x sgn(s) − ]
(13)
− [Δp * x r + kx r ]
+ D x sgn(s) Figure 1. The phase-plane plot of Quintic-Duffing chaotic oscillator.

According to (12), (13), (15) , the control law has the form:
where
 s
u = −16.75x − x + x r − 17 x r − 25sat ( ) (18)
0 .2

The simulation results are presented in Fig.3-Fig.6.

Figure 6. The time response of the trajectory error.

B. Duffing-Helmholtz Oscillator
Replacing f n ( x ) = x 2 in (1) yields the mathematical model
Figure 2. The time response of the state of Quintic-Duffing chaotic oscillator.
of the Duffing-Helmholtz oscillator:

x + a 1 x + a 2 x + x 2 + a 3 x 3 = R 1 cos ω1 t (19)

The chaotic functioning regime illustrated in the diagrams

presented in Fig.7, Fig.8, is obtained with the initial conditions
x (0) = x (0) = 1 , a 1 = 0.1, a 2 = 1 , a 3 = 5, R 1 = 0.9 , ω1 = 1 .

Figure 3. The plane-phase plot of controlled Quintic-Duffing oscillator.

Figure 7. The phase-plane plot of Duffing-Helmholtz chaotic oscillator.

Figure 4. The time response of the state of controlled Quintic-Duffing chaotic

oscillator.

Figure 8. The time response of the state of Duffing-Helmholtz chaotic

oscillator.

Imposing trajectory (17), the control law (12), (13), (15)

becomes:

s
u = −24.9x − x + x r − 25x r − 40sat ( ) (20)
0.3
Figure 5. The time response of the sliding surface function.
 The simulation results presented in Fig.9-Fig.12 illustrate C. Duffing-Van der Pol Oscillator
the stabilization of the system. The Duffing -Van der Pol oscillator represents a Duffing
oscillator with nonlinear amortization, having the dynamic of
the form:

( )
x + a 1 1 − x 2 x + a 2 x + x 3 = R 1 cos ω1 t (21)

In this case f n ( x, x ) = −a 1 x 2 x , and (21) is of the form (1).

For a 1 = −0.6, a 2 = 1, R 1 = 5, ω1 = 1 and initial conditions
x (0) = x (0) = 2 , the chaotic behavior of the oscillator (21) is
illustrated in Fig.13, Fig.14. Considering the same trajectory
(19), the control law (12), (13), (15) becomes in this case:
Figure 9. The plane-phase plot of controlled Duffing-Helmholts chaotic
oscillator. s
u = −8.6x − x + x r − 8x r − 40sat ( ) (22)
0.4

thus ensuring system stabilization. The simulation results are

presented in Fig.15-Fig.18.

Figure 10. The time response of the state of controlled Duffing-Helmholtz

chaotic oscillator.

Figure 13. The phase-plane plot of Duffing-Van der Pol chaotic oscillator.

Figure 11. The time response of the sliding surface function.

Figure 14. The time response of the state of Duffing-Van der Pol chaotic
oscillator.

Figure 12. The time response of the trajectory error.

Figure 15. The plane-phase plot of controlled Duffing-Van der Pol chaotic
oscillator.

Figure 16. The time response of the state of controlled Duffing-Van der Pol
chaotic oscillator.
Figure 17. The time response of the sliding surface function.
Figure 18. The time response of the trajectory error.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Starting from the robust stabilization method for chaotic
systems of Duffing - Holmes type presented in [5], this paper
presents the possibility of extending it to other types of
Duffing oscillators.
Following the same principles of synthesizing the control
law, we established the control of oscillators of type Quintic-
Duffing, Duffing-Helmholtz and Duffing-Van der Pol.
The synthesized control law allows the stabilization of the
chaotic nonlinear system, whereas the high frequency state
oscillations are eliminated. Simulation results confirm the
theoretical considerations.
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