Adaptive Meshing for CPA Lyapunov Function Synthesis

Continuous piecewise affine (CPA) Lyapunov function synthesis is one method to perform Lyapunov stability analysis for nonlinear systems. This method first generates a mesh over the region of interest in the system’s state space and then solves a linear program (LP), which enforces constraints on each vertex of the mesh, to synthesize a Lyapunov function. Finer meshes broaden the class of Lyapunov function candidates, but CPA function synthesis is more computationally expensive for finer meshes – particularly so in higher dimensional systems. This paper explores methods to mesh the region of interest more efficiently so that a Lyapunov function can be synthesized using less computational effort. Three methods are explored – adaptive meshing, meshing using knowledge of the system model, and a combination of the two. Numerical examples for two and three dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems are used to compare the efficacy of the three methods.