Nondegenerate Umbilics, the Path Formulation and Gradient bifurcation Problems

Parametrized contact-equivalence is a successful theory for the understanding and classification of the qualitative local behavior of bifurcation diagrams and their perturbations. Path formulation is an alternative point of view making explicit the singular behavior due to the core of the bifurcation germ (when the parameters vanish) from the effects of the way parameters enter. We show how to use path formulation to classify and structure efficiently multiparameter bifurcation problems in corank 2 problems. In particular, the nondegenerate umbilics singularities are the generic cores in four situations: the general or gradient problems, with or without ℤ2 symmetry where ℤ2 acts on the second component of ℝ2 via κ(x,y) = (x,-y). The universal unfolding of the umbilic singularities have an interesting "Russian doll" type of structure of miniversal unfoldings in all those categories. With the path formulation approach we can handle one, or more, parameter situations using the same framework. We can even consider some special parameter structure (for instance, some internal hierarchy of parameters). We classify the generic bifurcations with 1, 2 or 3 parameters that occur in those cases. Some results are known with one bifurcation parameter, but the others are new. We discuss some applications to the bifurcation of a loaded cylindrical panel. This problem has many natural parameters that provide concrete examples of our generic diagrams around the first interaction of the buckling modes.