LIMIT CYCLE BIFURCATIONS IN DISCONTINUOUS PLANAR SYSTEMS WITH MULTIPLE LINES

In this paper, the limit cycle bifurcation problem is investigated for a class of planar discontinuous perturbed systems with n parallel switch lines. Under the assumption that the unperturbed system has a family of periodic orbits crossing all of the lines, an explicit expression of the first order Melnikov function along the periodic orbits is presented, which plays an important role in studying the problem of limit cycle bifurcations. As an application of the established method, the maximal number of limit cycles of a discontinuous system is considered.