Stability analysis for a class of nonlinear switched systems

In the present paper, we study several qualitative properties of a class of nonlinear switched systems under certain switching laws. First, we show that if all the subsystems are linear time-invariant and the system matrices are commutative componentwise and stable, then the entire switched system is globally exponentially stable under arbitrary switching laws. Next, we study the above linear switched systems with certain nonlinear perturbations, which can be either vanishing or nonvanishing. Under reasonable assumptions, global exponential stability is established for these systems. We further study the stability and instability properties, under certain switching laws, for switched systems with commutative subsystem matrices that may be unstable. Results for both continuous-time and discrete-time cases are presented.