Periodic functions: self-intersections, local singular points, and folds

Abstract: The oscillations described by periodic functions play an important role in many areas. In the present paper, we study periodic functions which belong to the class of the $n$-member chains. The self-intersection and local singular points of these periodic functions are constructed. We consider several classical curves in two and three dimensions. We also introduce and study two new classes of periodic functions: the class of periodic helices and the class of S-torus knots. In the last section, we construct folds for the $2$-member chains. For these purposes, we derive and use several results on trigonometric formulas.