Analysis and Optimization of Differential Systems focuses on the qualitative aspects of deterministic and stochastic differential equations. Areas covered include: Ordinary and partial differential systems; Optimal control of deterministic and stochastic evolution equations; Control theory of Partial Differential Equations (PDE's); Optimization methods in PDE's with numerous applications to mechanics and physics; Inverse problems; Stability theory; Abstract optimization problems; Calculus of variations; Numerical treatment of solutions to differential equations and related optimization problems. These research fields are under very active development and the present volume should be of interest to students and researchers working in applied mathematics or in system engineering. This volume contains selected contributions presented during the International Working Conference on Analysis and Optimization of Differential Systems, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Constanta, Romania in September 2002. Among the aims of this conference was the creation of new international contacts and collaborations, taking advantage of the new developments in Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania. The conference benefited from the support of the European Union via the EURROMMAT program.

This work is a revised and enlarged edition of a book with the same title published in Romanian by the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy in 1989. It grew out of lecture notes for a graduate course given by the author at the University if Ia~i and was initially intended for students and readers primarily interested in applications of optimal control of ordinary differential equations. In this vision the book had to contain an elementary description of the Pontryagin maximum principle and a large number of examples and applications from various fields of science. The evolution of control science in the last decades has shown that its meth ods and tools are drawn from a large spectrum of mathematical results which go beyond the classical theory of ordinary differential equations and real analy ses. Mathematical areas such as functional analysis, topology, partial differential equations and infinite dimensional dynamical systems, geometry, played and will continue to play an increasing role in the development of the control sciences. On the other hand, control problems is a rich source of deep mathematical problems. Any presentation of control theory which for the sake of accessibility ignores these facts is incomplete and unable to attain its goals. This is the reason we considered necessary to widen the initial perspective of the book and to include a rigorous mathematical treatment of optimal control theory of processes governed by ordi nary differential equations and some typical problems from theory of distributed parameter systems.

Analysis and Optimization of Differential Systems focuses on the qualitative aspects of deterministic and stochastic differential equations. Areas covered include: Ordinary and partial differential systems; Optimal control of deterministic and stochastic evolution equations; Control theory of Partial Differential Equations (PDE's); Optimization methods in PDE's with numerous applications to mechanics and physics; Inverse problems; Stability theory; Abstract optimization problems; Calculus of variations; Numerical treatment of solutions to differential equations and related optimization problems. These research fields are under very active development and the present volume should be of interest to students and researchers working in applied mathematics or in system engineering. This volume contains selected contributions presented during the International Working Conference on Analysis and Optimization of Differential Systems, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Constanta, Romania in September 2002. Among the aims of this conference was the creation of new international contacts and collaborations, taking advantage of the new developments in Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania. The conference benefited from the support of the European Union via the EURROMMAT program.

The finite element, an approximation method for solving differential equations of mathematical physics, is a highly effective technique in the analysis and design, or synthesis, of structural dynamic systems. Starting from the system differential equations and its boundary conditions, what is referred to as a weak form of the problem (elaborated in the text) is developed in a variational sense. This variational statement is used to define elemental properties that may be written as matrices and vectors as well as to identify primary and secondary boundaries and all possible boundary conditions. Specific equilibrium problems are also solved. This book clearly reveals the effectiveness and great significance of the finite element method available and the essential role it will play in the future as further development occurs.

This volume comprises selected, revised papers from the Joint CIM-WIAS Workshop, TAAO 2017, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in December 2017. The workshop brought together experts from research groups at the Weierstrass Institute in Berlin and mathematics centres in Portugal to present and discuss current scientific topics and to promote existing and future collaborations. The papers include the following topics: PDEs with applications to material sciences, thermodynamics and laser dynamics, scientific computing, nonlinear optimization and stochastic analysis.

This book fills a gap between theory-oriented investigations in PDE-constrained optimization and the practical demands made by numerical solutions of PDE optimization problems. The authors discuss computational techniques representing recent developments that result from a combination of modern techniques for the numerical solution of PDEs and for sophisticated optimization schemes. The book offers readers a combined treatment of PDE-constrained optimization and uncertainties and an extensive discussion of multigrid optimization. It provides a bridge between continuous optimization and PDE modeling and focuses on the numerical solution of the corresponding problems.

Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, this text surveys the classical theory of the calculus of variations. It takes the approach most appropriate for applications to problems of optimizing the behavior of engineering systems. Two of these problem areas have strongly influenced this presentation: the design of the control systems and the choice of rocket trajectories to be followed by terrestrial and extraterrestrial vehicles. Topics include static systems, control systems, additional constraints, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and the accessory optimization problem. Prerequisites include a course in the analysis of functions of many real variables and a familiarity with the elementary theory of ordinary differential equations, especially linear equations. Emphasis throughout the text is placed upon methods and principles, which are illustrated by worked problems and sets of exercises. Solutions to the exercises are available from the publisher upon request.

This book highlights new developments in the wide and growing field of partial differential equations (PDE)-constrained optimization. Optimization problems where the dynamics evolve according to a system of PDEs arise in science, engineering, and economic applications and they can take the form of inverse problems, optimal control problems or optimal design problems. This book covers new theoretical, computational as well as implementation aspects for PDE-constrained optimization problems under uncertainty, in shape optimization, and in feedback control, and it illustrates the new developments on representative problems from a variety of applications.

This special volume focuses on optimization and control of processes governed by partial differential equations. The contributors are mostly participants of the DFG-priority program 1253: Optimization with PDE-constraints which is active since 2006. The book is organized in sections which cover almost the entire spectrum of modern research in this emerging field. Indeed, even though the field of optimal control and optimization for PDE-constrained problems has undergone a dramatic increase of interest during the last four decades, a full theory for nonlinear problems is still lacking. The contributions of this volume, some of which have the character of survey articles, therefore, aim at creating and developing further new ideas for optimization, control and corresponding numerical simulations of systems of possibly coupled nonlinear partial differential equations. The research conducted within this unique network of groups in more than fifteen German universities focuses on novel methods of optimization, control and identification for problems in infinite-dimensional spaces, shape and topology problems, model reduction and adaptivity, discretization concepts and important applications. Besides the theoretical interest, the most prominent question is about the effectiveness of model-based numerical optimization methods for PDEs versus a black-box approach that uses existing codes, often heuristic-based, for optimization.

This is a book on optimal control problems (OCPs) for partial differential equations (PDEs) that evolved from a series of courses taught by the authors in the last few years at Politecnico di Milano, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The book covers the whole range spanning from the setup and the rigorous theoretical analysis of OCPs, the derivation of the system of optimality conditions, the proposition of suitable numerical methods, their formulation, their analysis, including their application to a broad set of problems of practical relevance. The first introductory chapter addresses a handful of representative OCPs and presents an overview of the associated mathematical issues. The rest of the book is organized into three parts: part I provides preliminary concepts of OCPs for algebraic and dynamical systems; part II addresses OCPs involving linear PDEs (mostly elliptic and parabolic type) and quadratic cost functions; part III deals with more general classes of OCPs that stand behind the advanced applications mentioned above. Starting from simple problems that allow a “hands-on” treatment, the reader is progressively led to a general framework suitable to face a broader class of problems. Moreover, the inclusion of many pseudocodes allows the reader to easily implement the algorithms illustrated throughout the text. The three parts of the book are suitable to readers with variable mathematical backgrounds, from advanced undergraduate to Ph.D. levels and beyond. We believe that applied mathematicians, computational scientists, and engineers may find this book useful for a constructive approach toward the solution of OCPs in the context of complex applications.