Stability and Stabilizability of Continuous-Time Linear Compartmental Switched Systems

In this paper, we introduce continuous-time linear compartmental switched systems and investigate their stability and stabilizability properties. By their nature, these systems are always stable. Necessary and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability for arbitrary switching functions, and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability under certain dwell-time conditions on the switching functions are proposed. Finally, stabilizability is thoroughly investigated and proved to be equivalent to the existence of a Hurwitz convex combination of the subsystem matrices, a condition that, for positive switched systems, is only sufficient for stabilizability.