Robust Output Tracking for a Room Temperature Model with Distributed Control and Observation

We consider robust output regulation of a partial differential equation model describing temperature evolution in a room. More precisely, we examine a two-dimensional room model with the velocity field and temperature evolution governed by the incompressible steady state Navier-Stokes and advection-diffusion equations, respectively, which coupled together form a simplification of the Boussinesq equations. We assume that the control and observation operators of our system are distributed, whereas the disturbance acts on a part of the boundary of the system. We solve the robust output regulation problem using a finite-dimensional low-order controller, which is constructed using model reduction on a finite element approximation of the model. Through numerical simulations, we compare performance of the reduced-order controller to that of the controller without model reduction as well as to performance of a low-gain robust controller.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems, 23-27 August, 202

The Boussinesq system with mixed non-smooth boundary conditions and ``do-nothing'' boundary flow

A stationary Boussinesq system for an incompressible viscous fluid in a bounded domain with a nontrivial condition at an open boundary is studied. We consider a novel non-smooth boundary condition associated to the heat transfer on the open boundary that involves the temperature at the boundary, the velocity of the fluid, and the outside temperature. We show that this condition is compatible with two approaches at dealing with the do-nothing boundary condition for the fluid: 1) the directional do-nothing condition and 2) the do-nothing condition together with an integral bound for the backflow. Well-posedness of variational formulations is proved for each problem

Robust Output Regulation of the Linearized Boussinesq Equations with Boundary Control and Observation

We study temperature and velocity output tracking problem for a two-dimensional room model with the fluid dynamics governed by the linearized translated Boussinesq equations. Additionally, the room model includes finite-dimensional models for actuation and sensing dynamics, thus the complete model dynamics are governed by an ODE-PDE-ODE system. As the main result, we design a low-dimensional internal model based controller for robust output racking of the room model. Efficiency of the controller is demonstrated through a numerical example of velocity and temperature tracking.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, submitte

A numerical approach to the optimal control of thermally convective flows

The optimal control of thermally convective flows is usually modeled by an optimization problem with constraints of Boussinesq equations that consist of the Navier-Stokes equation and an advection-diffusion equation. This optimal control problem is challenging from both theoretical analysis and algorithmic design perspectives. For example, the nonlinearity and coupling of fluid flows and energy transports prevent direct applications of gradient type algorithms in practice. In this paper, we propose an efficient numerical method to solve this problem based on the operator splitting and optimization techniques. In particular, we employ the Marchuk-Yanenko method leveraged by the $L^2-$projection for the time discretization of the Boussinesq equations so that the Boussinesq equations are decomposed into some easier linear equations without any difficulty in deriving the corresponding adjoint system. Consequently, at each iteration, four easy linear advection-diffusion equations and two degenerated Stokes equations at each time step are needed to be solved for computing a gradient. Then, we apply the Bercovier-Pironneau finite element method for space discretization, and design a BFGS type algorithm for solving the fully discretized optimal control problem. We look into the structure of the problem, and design a meticulous strategy to seek step sizes for the BFGS efficiently. Efficiency of the numerical approach is promisingly validated by the results of some preliminary numerical experiments

Feedback Stabilization of a Thermal Fluid System with Mixed Boundary Control

We consider the problem of local exponential stabilization of the nonlinear Boussinesq equations with control acting on portion of the boundary. In particular, given a steady state solution on an bounded and connected domain Ω Ϲ R2, we show that a finite number of controls acting on a part of the boundary through Neumann/Robin boundary conditions is sufficient to stabilize the full nonlinear equations in a neighborhood of this steady state solution. Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed on the rest of the boundary. We prove that a stabilizing feedback control law can be obtained by solving a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) problem for the linearized Boussinesq equations. Numerical result are provided for a 2D problem to illustrate the ideas