Lagrangian controllability at low Reynolds number

Abstract

In this paper, we establish a result of Lagrangian controllability for a fluid at low Reynolds number, driven by the stationary Stokes equation. This amounts to the possibility of displacing a part of a fluid from one zone to another by suitably using a boundary control. This relies on a weak variant of the Runge-Walsh's theorem (on approximation of harmonic functions) concerning the Stokes equation. We give two variants of this result, one of which we believe to be better adapted to numerical simulations