Stability Theory

Stability plays an important role in the theory of dynamical systems and control. It characterizes the property of an unperturbed trajectory that all perturbed trajectories starting nearby stay nearby: small perturbations cause only small changes in the system behavior. The most important concept of stability has bee introduced by the Russian mathematician A. M. Lyapunov in 1892. Based on his famous work a general “Lyapunov theory” has been developed to investigate the stability behavior of general dynamical systems. Here, the basic ideas and results of this theory are presented.