Computing polyhedral approximations to flow pipes for dynamic systems

This paper presents a new approach to approximating the flows of continuous time dynamic systems from sets of initial conditions. The reachable set, or flow pipe, over a time interval [0, t_f] is approximated by the union of a sequence of convex polyhedra. Each polyhedron contains a segment of the flow pipe. Properties of the approximation technique are discussed and illustrated with examples for linear and nonlinear systems, including the application of flow pipe approximation to verification of a simple hybrid system