In this work, the issue of estimation of reachable sets in continuous bimodal piecewise affine systems is studied. A new method is proposed, in the framework of ellipsoidal bounding, using piecewise quadratic Lyapunov functions. Although bimodal piecewise affine systems can be seen as a special class of affine hybrid systems, reachability methods developed for affine hybrid systems might be inappropriately complex for bimodal dynamics. This work goes in the direction of exploiting the dynamical

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... structure of the system to propose a simpler approach. More specifically, because of the piecewise nature of the Lyapunov function, we first derive conditions to ensure that a given quadratic function is positive on half spaces. Then, we exploit the property of bimodal piecewise quadratic functions being continuous on a given hyperplane. Finally, linear matrix characterizations of the estimate of the reachable set are derived.