Bifurcation Analysis of the Watt Governor System

Jorge Sotomayor, Luis Fernando Mello, Denis de Carvalho Braga

Published 2006-06-09, updated 2006-08-02Version 3

This paper pursues the study carried out by the authors in {\it Stability and Hopf bifurcation in the Watt governor system} \cite{smb}, focusing on the codimension one Hopf bifurcations in the centrifugal Watt governor differential system, as presented in Pontryagin's book {\it Ordinary Differential Equations}, \cite{pon}. Here are studied the codimension two and three Hopf bifurcations and the pertinent Lyapunov stability coefficients and bifurcation diagrams, illustrating the number, types and positions of bifurcating small amplitude periodic orbits, are determined. As a consequence it is found a region in the space of parameters where an attracting periodic orbit coexists with an attracting equilibrium.