Feedback control for unsteady flow and its application to the stochastic Burgers equation

Abstract

Mathematical methods of control theory are applied to the problem of control of fluid flow with the long-range objective of developing effective methods for the control of turbulent flows. The procedure of how to cast the problem of controlling turbulence into a problem in optimal control theory is presented using model problems through the formalism and language of control theory. Then we present a suboptimal control and feedback procedure for general stationary and time-dependent problems using methods of calculus of variations through the adjoint state and gradient algorithms. This suboptimal feedback control procedure is applied to the stochastic Burgers equation. Two types of controls are investigated: distributed and boundary controls. The control inputs are the momentum forcing for the distributed control and the boundary velocity for the boundary control. Costs to be minimized are defined as the sum of the mean-square velocity gradient inside the domain for the distributed control or the square velocity gradient at the wall for the boundary control; and in both cases a term was added to account for the implementation cost. Several cases of both controls have been numerically simulated to investigate the performances of the control algorithm. Most cases considered show significant reductions of the costs. Another version of the feedback procedure more effective for practical implementation has been considered and implemented, and the application of this algorithm also shows significant reductions of the costs. Finally, dependence of the control algorithm on the time-discretization method is discussed.