Liapunov-Floquet Transformation: Computation and Applications to Periodic Systems

In this paper, a new analysis technique in the study of dynamical systems with periodically varying parameters is presented. The method is based on the fact that all linear periodic systems can be replaced by similar linear time-invariant systems through a suitable periodic transformation known as the Liapunov-Floquet (L-F) transformation. A general technique for the computation of the L-F transformation matrices is suggested. In this procedure, the state vector and the periodic matrix of the linear system equations are expanded in terms of the shifted Chebyshev polynomials over the principal period. Such an expansion reduces the original differential problem to a set of linear algebraic equations from which the state transition matrix (STM) can be constructed over the period in closed form. Application of Floquet theory and eigenanalysis to the resulting STM yields the L-F transformation matrix in a form suitable for algebraic manipulations. The utility of the L-F transformation in obtaining solutions of both linear and nonlinear dynamical systems with periodic coefficients is demonstrated. It is shown that the application of L-F transformation to free and harmonically forced linear periodic systems directly provides the conditions for internal and combination resonances and external resonances, respectively. The application of L-F transformation to quasilinear periodic systems provides a dynamically similar quasilinear systems whose linear parts are time-invariant and the solutions of such systems can be obtained through an application of the time dependent normal form theory. These solutions can be transformed back to the original coordinates using the inverse L-F transformation. Two dynamical systems, namely, a commutative system and a Mathieu type equation are considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. It is shown that the present technique is virtually free from the small parameter restriction unlike averaging and perturbation procedures and can be used even for those systems for which the generating solutions do not exist in the classical sense. The results obtained from the proposed technique are compared with those obtained via the perturbation method and numerical solutions computed using a Runge-Kutta type algorithm.