Onset of chaos in a single-phase power electronic inverter

Supported by experiments on a power electronic DC/AC converter, this paper considers an unusual transition from the domain of stable periodic dynamics (corresponding to the desired mode of operation) to chaotic dynamics. The behavior of the converter is studied by means of a 1D stroboscopic map derived from a non-autonomous ordinary differential equation with discontinuous right-hand side. By construction, this stroboscopic map has a high number of border points. It is shown that the onset of chaos occurs stepwise, via irregular cascades of different border collisions, some of which lead to bifurcations while others do not.