  Routing mechanisms for stochastic networks are often designed to produce
state space collapse (SSC) in a heavy-traffic limit, i.e., to confine the
limiting process to a lower-dimensional subset of its full state space. In a
fluid limit, a control producing asymptotic SSC corresponds to an ideal sliding
mode control that forces the fluid trajectories to a lower-dimensional sliding
manifold. Within deterministic dynamical systems theory, it is well known that
sliding-mode controls can cause the system to chatter back and forth along the
sliding manifold due to delays in activation of the control. For the prelimit
stochastic system, chattering implies fluid-scaled fluctuations that are larger
than typical stochastic fluctuations. In this paper we show that chattering can
occur in the fluid limit of a controlled stochastic network when inappropriate
control parameters are used. The model has two large service pools operating
under the fixed-queue-ratio with activation and release thresholds (FQR-ART)
overload control which we proposed in a recent paper. We now show that, if the
control parameters are not chosen properly, then delays in activating and
releasing the control can cause chattering with large oscillations in the fluid
limit. In turn, these fluid-scaled fluctuations lead to severe congestion, even
when the arrival rates are smaller than the potential total service rate in the
system, a phenomenon referred to as congestion collapse. We show that the fluid
limit can be a bi-stable switching system possessing a unique nontrivial
periodic equilibrium, in addition to a unique stationary point.
