Adaptive Finite Element Methods For Control Constrained Distributed And Boundary Optimal Control Problems

Adaptive Finite Element Methods for Control Constrained Distributed and Boundary Optimal Control Problems

Constrained Optimization and Optimal Control for Partial Differential Equations

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.

Finite Element Error Analysis for PDE-constrained Optimal Control Problems

Subject of this work is the analysis of numerical methods for the solution of optimal control problems governed by elliptic partial differential equations. Such problems arise, if one does not only want to simulate technical or physical processes but also wants to optimize them with the help of one or more influence variables. In many practical applications these influence variables, so called controls, cannot be chosen arbitrarily, but have to fulfill certain inequality constraints. The numerical treatment of such control constrained optimal control problems requires a discretization of the underlying infinite dimensional function spaces. To guarantee the quality of the numerical solution one has to estimate and to quantify the resulting approximation errors. In this thesis a priori error estimates for finite element discretizations are proved in case of corners or edges in the underlying domain and nonsmooth coefficients in the partial differential equation. These facts influence the regularity properties of the solution and require adapted meshes to get optimal convergence rates. Isotropic and anisotropic refinement strategies are given and error estimates in polygonal and prismatic domains are proved. The theoretical results are confirmed by numerical tests.