Bang-bang property for time optimal control of semilinear heat equation

This paper studies the bang-bang property for time optimal controls governed by semilinear heat equation in a bounded domain with control acting locally in a subset. Also, we present the null controllability cost for semilinear heat equation and an observability estimate from a positive measurable set in time for the linear heat equation with potential.     

Optimal bang-bang controls arising in a Sobolev impulse control problem

In this note the switches of optimal bang-bang controls associated with Sobolev impulse control problems are studied. The determination of the number of switches in such controls is discussed and examples are considered. Also, sequences of approximating controls arising from the variational optimality conditions are shown to converge almost everywhere to the optimal control.     

The Markov power moment problem in problems of controllability and frequency extinguishing for the wave equation on a half-axis

In this paper necessary and sufficient conditions of null-controllability and approximate null-controllability are obtained for the wave equation on a half-axis. Controls solving these problems are found explicitly. Moreover, bang-bang controls solving the approximate null-controllability problem are constructed with the aid of solutions of a frequency extinguishing problem in the restricted band (−a,a) for this equation and the Markov power moment problem.     

Optimal institutional advertising: Minimum-time problem

This paper considers the problem of optimizing the institutional advertising expenditure for a firm which produces two products. The problem is formulated as a minimum-time control problem for the dynamics of an extended Vidale-Wolfe advertising model, the optimal control being the rate of institutional advertising that minimizes the time to attain the specified target market shares for the two products. The attainable set and the optimal control are obtained by applying the recent theory developed by Hermes and Haynes extending the Green's theorem approach to higher dimensions. It is shown that the optimal control is a strict bang-bang control. An interesting side result is that the singular arc obtained by the Green's theorem application turns out to be a maximum-time solution over the set of all feasible controls. The result clarifies the connection between the Green's theorem approach and the maximum principle approach.     

An optimal control problem in cancer chemotherapy

We consider a mathematical model for the control of the growth of tumor cells which is formulated as a problem of optimal control theory. It is concerned with chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer and aims at the minimization of the size of the tumor at the end of a certain time interval of treatment with a limited amount of drugs. The treatment is controlled by the dosis of drugs that is administered per time unit for which also a limit is prescribed. It is shown that optimal controls are of bang-bang type and can be chosen at the upper limit, if the total amount of drugs is large enough.     

Some remarks on the numerical solution of bang-bang type optimal control problems

This paper is concerned with the numerical solution of optimal control problems for which each optimal control is bang-bang. Especially, the results apply to parabolic boundary control Problems. Starting from a sequence of feasible solutions converging to an optimal control u, a sequence of bang-bang controls converging to u is constructed. Bang-bang approximations of u are desirable for certain numerical reasons. Sequences of arbitrary feasible controls converging to u may be obtained by discretization or by a descent method. Numerical examples are also given.     

A note on the approximation of Dirichlet boundary control problems for the wave equation on curved domains

We consider an exact boundary control problem for the wave equation with given initial and terminal data and Dirichlet boundary control. The aim is to steer the state of the system that is defined on a given domain to a position of rest in finite time. The optimal control that is obtained as the solution of the problem depends on the data that define the problem, in particular on the domain. Often for the numerical solution of the control problem, this given domain is replaced by a polygon. This is the motivation to study the convergence of the optimal controls for the polygon to the optimal controls for the given domain. To study the convergence, the values of the optimal controls that are defined on the boundaries of the approximating polygons are mapped in the normal directions of the polygon to control functions defined on the boundary of the original domain. This map has already been used by Bramble and King, Deckelnick, Guenther and Hinze and by Casas and Sokolowski. Using this map, we can show the strong convergence of the transformed controls as the polygons approach the given domain. An essential tool to obtain the convergence is a regularization term in the objective functions to increase the regularity of the state.     

Optimization Techniques for Solving Elliptic Control Problems with Control and State Constraints: Part 1. Boundary Control

We study optimal control problems for semilinear elliptic equations subject to control and state inequality constraints. In a first part we consider boundary control problems with either Dirichlet or Neumann conditions. By introducing suitable discretization schemes, the control problem is transcribed into a nonlinear programming problem. It is shown that a recently developed interior point method is able to solve these problems even for high discretizations. Several numerical examples with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions are provided that illustrate the performance of the algorithm for different types of controls including bang-bang and singular controls. The necessary conditions of optimality are checked numerically in the presence of active control and state constraints.     

Bang-bang principle of time optimal controls and null controllability of fractional order parabolic equations

In this paper, we establish a bang-bang principle of time optimal controls for a controlled parabolic equation of fractional order evolved in a bounded domain Ω of R^n, with a controller w to be any given nonempty open subset of Ω. The problem is reduced to a new controllability property for this equation, i.e. the null controllability of the system at any given time T 〉 0 when the control is restricted to be active in ω× E, where E is any given subset of [0, T] with positive （Legesgue） measure. The desired controllability result is established by means of a sharp observability estimate on the eigenfunctions of the Dirichlet Laplacian due to Lebeau and Robbiano, and a delicate result in the measure theory due to Lions.     

Time-optimal control of parabolic systems with boundary conditions involving time delays

The present paper is concerned with the control of certain parabolic systems whose boundary conditions involve time delays. The optimal controls are characterized in terms of an adjoint system and shown to be unique and bang-bang. These results extend to certain cases of nonlinear control and to fixed-time, minimum-norm control problems.     

On a discrete approximation of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation of dynamic programming

An approximation of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation connected with the infinite horizon optimal control problem with discount is proposed. The approximate solutions are shown to converge uniformly to the viscosity solution, in the sense of Crandall-Lions, of the original problem. Moreover, the approximate solutions are interpreted as value functions of some discrete time control problem. This allows to construct by dynamic programming a minimizing sequence of piecewise constant controls.     

Piecewise-Linear Pathways to the Optimal Solution Set in Linear Programming

An optimal control problem with four linear controls describing a sophisticated concern model is investigated. The numerical solution of this problem by combination of a direct collocation and an indirect multiple shooting method is presented and discussed. The approximation provided by the direct method is used to estimate the switching structure caused by the four controls occurring linearly. The optimal controls have bang-bang subarcs as well as constrained and singular subarcs. The derivation of necessary conditions from optimal control theory is aimed at the subsequent application of an indirect multiple shooting method but is also interesting from a mathematical point of view. Due to the linear occurrence of the controls, the minimum principle leads to a linear programming problem. Therefore, the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions can be used for an optimality check of the solution obtained by the indirect method.     

VARIATIONAL DISCRETIZATION OF A CONTROL-CONSTRAINED PARABOLIC BANG-BANG OPTIMAL CONTROL PROBLEM

We consider a control-constrained parabolic optimal control problem without Tikhonov term in the tracking functional.For the numerical treatment,we use variational discretization of its Tikhonov regularization:For the state and the adjoint equation,we apply Petrov-Galerkin schemes in time and usual conforming finite elements in space.We prove a-priori estimates for the error between the discretized regularized problem and the limit problem.Since these estimates are not robust if the regularization parameter tends to zero,we establish robust estimates,which--depending on the problem's regularity——enhance the previous ones.In the special case of bang-bang solutions,these estimates are further improved.A numerical example confirms our analytical findings.     

Approximations to time-optimal boundary controls for weak generalized solutions of the wave equation

For the wave equation, time-optimal control problems with two-sided boundary controls of three basic types are considered in classes of weak generalized solutions. Stable algorithms for computing approximate optimal times and optimal boundary controls are developed by modifying algorithms proposed earlier for the case of strong generalized solutions. The approximate solutions are proved to converge as the parameters of the finite-dimensional approximation are asymptotically refined and the errors in the specified terminal functions are reduced.     

Adaptive control of a continuous-time portfolio and consumption model

In this paper, an adaptive control problem is formulated and solved using Merton's stochastic differential equation for the wealth in a portfolio selection and consumption model. Since the asset prices are assumed to satisfy a log normal distribution, it suffices to consider two assets. It is assumed that the drift parameter for the price of the risky asset is unknown. A recursive family of estimators for this unknown parameter is defined and is shown to converge almost surely to the true value of the parameter. The controls in the equation for the wealth are obtained from the optimal controls where the estimates of the unknown parameter are substituted for the unknown parameter.This research was partially supported by NSF Grant No. ECS-84-03286-A01.The authors wish to thank P. Varaiya for some useful comments on this paper.     

Convex-concave utility function: Optimal blood-consumption for vampires

This paper considers an optimal control problem for the dynamics of a predator-prey model. The predator population has to choose the predation intensity over time in a way that maximizes the present value of the utility stream derived by consuming prey. The utility function is assumed to be convex for small levels of consumption and concave otherwise. The problem is solved using the maximum principle and different time patterns of the optimal solution are obtained in the cases of small, medium and high rates of time preference. The model has features of both, convex and concave optimal control problems and therefore phase plane analysis has to be combined with the problem of synthesis of bang-bang, singular and chattering solution pieces.     

Numerical solution of a time-optimal parabolic boundary-value control problem

A special time-optimal parabolic boundary-value control problem describing a one-dimensional heat-diffusion process is solved numerically. Using a bang-bang principle recently proved by Lempio, this problem can be transformed in such a way that the variables are jumps of bang-bang controls. A discretization is performed in two steps, and the convergence of the approximate solutions is proved. Finally, an algorithm to solve the discrete problem is developed and some numerical results are discussed.The author would like to thank Prof. F. Lempio, who pointed out this problem to him, and Prof. K. Glashoff for many helpful comments and suggestions.     

Periodic switching strategies for an isoperimetric control problem with application to nonlinear chemical reactions

This paper deals with an isoperimetric optimal control problem for nonlinear control-affine systems with periodic boundary conditions. As it was shown previously, the candidates for optimal controls for this problem can be obtained within the class of bang-bang input functions. We consider a parametrization of these inputs in terms of switching times. The control-affine system under consideration is transformed into a driftless system by assuming that the controls possess properties of a partition of unity. Then the problem of constructing periodic trajectories is studied analytically by applying the Fliess series expansion over a small time horizon. We propose analytical results concerning the relation between the boundary conditions and switching parameters for an arbitrary number of switchings. These analytical results are applied to a mathematical model of non-isothermal chemical reactions. It is shown that the proposed control strategies can be exploited to improve the reaction performance in comparison to the steady-state operation mode.     

Time optimal sampled-data controls for the heat equation

In this paper, we first design a time optimal control problem for the heat equation with sampled-data controls, and then use it to approximate a time optimal control problem for the heat equation with distributed controls.The study of such a time optimal sampled-data control problem is not easy, because it may have infinitely many optimal controls. We find connections among this problem, a minimal norm sampled-data control problem and a minimization problem, and obtain some properties on these problems. Based on these, we not only build up error estimates for optimal time and optimal controls between the time optimal sampled-data control problem and the time optimal distributed control problem, in terms of the sampling period, but we also prove that such estimates are optimal in some sense.     

Optimal Bang-Bang Controls for a Two-Compartment Model in Cancer Chemotherapy

A class of mathematical models for cancer chemotherapy which have been described in the literature take the form of an optimal control problem over a finite horizon with control constraints and dynamics given by a bilinear system. In this paper, we analyze a two-dimensional model in which the cell cycle is broken into two compartments. The cytostatic agent used as control to kill the cancer cells is active only in the second compartment where cell division occurs and the cumulative effect of the drug is used to model the negative effect of the treatment on healthy cells. It is shown that singular controls are not optimal for this model and the optimality properties of bang-bang controls are established. Specifically, transversality conditions at the switching surfaces are derived. In a nondegenerate setting, these conditions guarantee the local optimality of the flow if satisfied, while trajectories will be no longer optimal if they are violated.