Towards Riccati-Feedback Control of Complex Flows with Moving Interfaces

Problems featuring moving interfaces appear in many applications. They can model solidification and melting of pure materials, crystal growth and other multi-phase problems. The control of the moving interface enables to, for example, influence production processes and, thus, the product material quality. We consider the two-phase Stefan problem that models a solid and a liquid phase separated by the moving interface. In the liquid phase, the heat distribution is characterized by a convection-diffusion equation. The fluid flow in the liquid phase is described by the Navier–Stokes equations which introduces a differential algebraic structure to the system. The interface movement is coupled with the temperature through the Stefan condition, which adds additional algebraic constraints. Our formulation uses a sharp interface representation and we define a quadratic tracking-type cost functional as a target of a control input. We compute an open loop optimal control for the Stefan problem using an adjoint system. For a feedback representation, we linearize the system about the trajectory defined by the open loop control. This results in a linear-quadratic regulator problem, for which we formulate the differential Riccati equation with time varying coefficients. This Riccati equation defines the corresponding feedback gain. Further, we present the feedback formulation that takes into account the structure and the differential algebraic components of the problem. Also, we discuss how the complexities that come, for example, with mesh movements, can be handled in a feedback setting. (© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)