Exponential stabilization of nonlinear driftless affine control systems is addressed with the concern of achieving robustness with respect to imperfect knowledge of the system's control vector fields. In order to satisfy this robustness requirement, and inspired by Bennani and Rouchon [1] where the same issue was first addressed, we consider a control strategy which consists in applying periodically updated open-loop controls that are continuous with respect to state initial conditions. These controllers are more precisely described as continuous time-periodic feedbacks associated with a specific dynamic extension of the original system. Sufficient conditions which, if they are satisfied by the control law, ensure that the control is a robust exponential stabilizer for the extended system are given. Explicit and simple control expressions which satisfy these conditions in the case of n-dimensional chained systems are proposed. A constructive algorithm for the design of such control laws, which applies to any (sufficiently regular) driftless control system, is described.

We apply Robin penalization to Dirichlet optimal control problemsgoverned by semilinear elliptic equations. Error estimates in terms of the penalization parameter are stated. The results are compared with some previous ones in the literature and are checked by a numerical experiment. A detailed study of the regularity of the solutions of the PDEs is carried out.

We are concerned with the optimal control of a nonlinear stochastic heat equation on a bounded real interval with Neumann boundary conditions. The specificity here is that both the control and the noise act on the boundary. We start by reformulating the state equation as an infinite dimensional stochastic evolution equation. The first main result of the paper is the proof of existence and uniqueness of a mild solution for the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. The C 1 regularity of such a solution is then used to construct the optimal feedback for the control problem. In order to overcome the difficulties arising from the degeneracy of the second order operator and from the presence of unbounded terms we study the HJB equation by introducing a suitable forward-backward system of stochastic differential equations as in the appraoch proposed in [Fuhrman and Tessitore, Ann. Probab.30 (2002) 1397-1465; Pardoux and Peng, Lect. Notes Control Inf. Sci.176 (1992) 200-217] for finite dimensional and infinite dimensional semilinear parabolic equations respectively.

An existence and regularity theorem is proved for integral equations of convolution type which contain hysteresis nonlinearities. On the basis of this result, frequency-domain stability criteria are derived for feedback systems with a linear infinite-dimensional system in the forward path and a hysteresis nonlinearity in the feedback path. These stability criteria are reminiscent of the classical circle criterion which applies to static sector-bounded nonlinearities. The class of hysteresis operators under consideration contains many standard hysteresis nonlinearities which are important in control engineering such as backlash (or play), plastic-elastic (or stop) and Prandtl operators. Whilst the main results are developed in the context of integral equations of convolution type, applications to well-posed state space systems are also considered.

We apply the well-known homotopy continuation method to address themotion planning problem (MPP) for smooth driftless control-affinesystems. The homotopy continuation method is a Newton-type procedureto effectively determine functions only defined implicitly. Thatapproach requires first to characterize the singularities of asurjective map and next to prove global existence for the solution ofan ordinary differential equation, the Wazewski equation. In thecontext of the MPP, the aforementioned singularities are the abnormalextremals associated to the dynamics of the control system and theWazewski equation is an o.d.e. on the control space called the PathLifting Equation (PLE). We first show elementary factsrelative to the maximal solution of the PLE such as local existence anduniqueness. Then we prove two general results, a finite-dimensionalreduction for the PLE on compact time intervals and aregularity preserving theorem. In a second part, if the Strong BracketGenerating Condition holds, we show, forseveral control spaces, the global existence of the solution of the PLE,extending a previous result of H.J. Sussmann.

In [CITE], Kronrod proves that the connected components of isolevel sets of a continuous function can be endowed with a tree structure. Obviously, the connected components of upper level sets are an inclusion tree, and the same is true for connected components of lower level sets. We prove that in the case of semicontinuous functions, those trees can be merged into a single one, which, following its use in image processing, we call “tree of shapes”. This permits us to solve a classical representation problem in mathematical morphology: to represent an image in such a way that maxima and minima can be computationally dealt with simultaneously. We prove the finiteness of the tree when the image is the result of applying any extrema killer (a classical denoising filter in image processing). The shape tree also yields an easy mathematical definition of adaptive image quantization.

We state and prove a Korn-like inequality for a vector field in abounded open set of $\mathbb{R}^N$ , satisfying a tangency boundary condition.This inequality, which is crucial in our study of the trend towardsequilibrium for dilute gases, holds true if and only if the domain is notaxisymmetric. We give quantitative, explicit estimates on how thedeparture from axisymmetry affects the constants; a Monge–Kantorovichminimization problem naturally arises in this process. Variants in the axisymmetric case are briefly discussed.

Among ${\mathbb R}^3$ -valued triples of random vectors (X,Y,Z) having fixed marginal probability laws, what is the best way to jointly draw (X,Y,Z) in such a way that the simplex generated by (X,Y,Z) has maximal average volume? Motivated by this simple question, we study optimal transportation problems with several marginals when the objective function is the determinant or its absolute value.

We consider a two-player zero-sum-game in a bounded open domain Ω described as follows: at a point x ∈ Ω, Players I and II play an ε-step tug-of-war game with probability α, and with probability β (α + β = 1), a random point in the ball of radius ε centered at x is chosen. Once the game position reaches the boundary, Player II pays Player I the amount given by a fixed payoff function F. We give a detailed proof of the fact that the value functions of this game satisfy the Dynamic Programming Principle

for x ∈ Ω with u(y) = F(y) when y ∉ Ω. This principle implies the existence of quasioptimal Markovian strategies.

We prove Hölder regularity of the gradient, up to the boundary for solutions of somefully-nonlinear, degenerate elliptic equations, with degeneracy coming from thegradient.

We consider the approximation of a class ofexponentially stable infinite dimensional linear systems modellingthe damped vibrations of one dimensional vibrating systems or ofsquare plates. It is by now well known that the approximatingsystems obtained by usual finite element or finite difference arenot, in general, uniformly stable with respect to the discretizationparameter. Our main result shows that, by adding a suitablenumerical viscosity term in the numerical scheme, our approximationsare uniformly exponentially stable. This result is then applied toobtain strongly convergent approximations of the solutions of thealgebraic Riccati equations associated to an LQR optimal controlproblem. We next give an application to a non-homogeneous stringequation. Finally we apply similar techniques for approximating theequations of a damped square plate.

We consider in this article diagonal parabolic systems arising in the context of stochastic differential games.We address the issue of finding smooth solutions of the system. Such a regularity result is extremely important to derive an optimal feedback proving the existence of a Nash point of a certain class of stochastic differential games.Unlike in the case of scalar equation, smoothness of solutions is not achieved in general. A special structure of the nonlinear Hamiltonian seems to be the adequate one to achieve the regularity property. A key step in the theory is to prove the existence of Hölder solution.

In this paper, we prove that the Lp approximants naturally associated to a supremal functionalΓ-converge to it. This yields a lower semicontinuity result for supremalfunctionals whose supremand satisfy weak coercivity assumptions aswell as a generalized Jensen inequality. The existence of minimizersfor variational problems involving such functionals (together with aDirichlet condition) then easily follows. In the scalarcase we show the existence of at least one absolute minimizer (i.e. localsolution) among these minimizers. We provide two different proofs ofthis fact relying on different assumptions and techniques.

We prove the interior null-controllability of one-dimensionalparabolic equations with time independent measurable coefficients.

This paper presents a method to design explicit control Lyapunov functions for affine and homogeneous systems that satisfy the so-called “Jurdjevic-Quinn conditions”. For these systems a positive definite function V0 is known that can only be made non increasing by feedback. We describe how a control Lyapunov function can be obtained via a deformation of this “weak” Lyapunov function. Some examples are presented, and the linear quadratic situation is treated as an illustration.


In this paper, the stability of a Timoshenko beam with time delaysin the boundary input is studied. The system is fixed at the leftend, and at the other end there are feedback controllers, in which time delays exist. We prove that this closed loop system iswell-posed. By the complete spectral analysis, we show that there isa sequence of eigenvectors and generalized eigenvectors of thesystem operator that forms a Riesz basis for the state Hilbert space. Hence the system satisfies the spectrum determined growth condition. Then we conclude the exponential stability of the system under certain conditions. Finally, we give some simulations to support our results.


In this paper we are concerned with a distributed optimal control problem governed by an elliptic partial differential equation. State constraints of box type are considered. We show that the Lagrange multiplier associated with the state constraints, which is known to be a measure, is indeed more regular under quite general assumptions. We discretize the problem by continuous piecewise linear finite elements and we are able to prove that, for the case of a linear equation, the order of convergence for the error in L2(Ω) of the control variable is h | log h | in dimensions 2 and 3.

Shape optimization of mechanical devices is investigated in the context of large, geometrically strongly nonlinear deformations and nonlinear hyperelastic constitutive laws. A weighted sum of the structure compliance, its weight, and its surface area are minimized. The resulting nonlinear elastic optimization problem differs significantly from classical shape optimization in linearized elasticity. Indeed, there exist different definitions for the compliance: the change in potential energy of the surface load, the stored elastic deformation energy, and the dissipation associated with the deformation. Furthermore, elastically optimal deformations are no longer unique so that one has to choose the minimizing elastic deformation for which the cost functional should be minimized, and this complicates the mathematical analysis. Additionally, along with the non-uniqueness, buckling instabilities can appear, and the compliance functional may jump as the global equilibrium deformation switches between different bluckling modes. This is associated with a possible non-existence of optimal shapes in a worst-case scenario. In this paper the sharp-interface description of shapes is relaxed via an Allen-Cahn or Modica-Mortola type phase-field model, and soft material instead of void is considered outside the actual elastic object. An existence result for optimal shapes in the phase field as well as in the sharp-interface model is established, and the model behavior for decreasing phase-field interface width is investigated in terms of Γ-convergence. Computational results are based on a nested optimization with a trust-region method as the inner minimization for the equilibrium deformation and a quasi-Newton method as the outer minimization of the actual objective functional. Furthermore, a multi-scale relaxation approach with respect to the spatial resolution and the phase-field parameter is applied. Various computational studies underline the theoretical observations.

In this paper, we consider the well-known Fattorini’s criterion for approximate controllability of infinite dimensional linear systems of type y′ = Ay + Bu. We precise the result proved by Fattorini in [H.O. Fattorini, SIAM J. Control 4 (1966) 686–694.] for bounded input B, in the case where B can be unbounded or in the case of finite-dimensional controls. More precisely, we prove that if Fattorini’s criterion is satisfied and if the set of geometric multiplicities of A is bounded then approximate controllability can be achieved with finite dimensional controls. An important consequence of this result consists in using the Fattorini’s criterion to obtain the feedback stabilizability of linear and nonlinear parabolic systems with feedback controls in a finite dimensional space. In particular, for systems described by partial differential equations, such a criterion reduces to a unique continuation theorem for a stationary system. We illustrate such a method by tackling some coupled Navier−Stokes type equations (MHD system and micropolar fluid system) and we sketch a systematic procedure relying on Fattorini’s criterion for checking stabilizability of such nonlinear systems. In that case, the unique continuation theorems rely on local Carleman inequalities for stationary Stokes type systems.

We consider a finite-dimensional control system $(\Sigma)\ \ \dot x(t)=f(x(t),u(t))$, such that there exists a feedback stabilizer k that renders $\dot x=f(x,k(x))$ globally asymptotically stable. Moreover, for (H,p,q) with H an output map and $1\leq p\leq q\leq \infty$, we assume that there exists a ${\cal {K}}_{\infty}$-function α such that $\|H(x_u)\|_q\leq \alpha(\|u\|_p)$, where xu is the maximal solution of $(\Sigma)_k \ \ \dot x(t)=f(x(t),k(x(t))+u(t))$, corresponding to u and to the initial condition x(0)=0. Then, the gain function $G_{(H,p,q)}$ of (H,p,q) given by 14.5cm $$ G_{(H,p,q)}(X)\stackrel{\rm def}{=}\sup_{\|u\|_p=X}\|H(x_u)\|_q, $$ is well-defined. We call profile of k for (H,p,q) any ${\cal {K}}_{\infty}$-function which is of the same order of magnitude as $G_{(H,p,q)}$. For the double integrator subject to input saturation and stabilized by $k_L(x)=-(1\ 1)^Tx$, we determine the profiles corresponding to the main output maps. In particular, if $\sigma_0$ is used to denote the standard saturation function, we show that the L2-gain from the output of the saturation nonlinearity to u of the system $\ddot x=\sigma_0(-x-\dot x+u)$ with $x(0)= \dot x(0)=0$, is finite. We also provide a class of feedback stabilizers kF that have a linear profile for (x,p,p), $1\leq p\leq \infty$. For instance, we show that the L2-gains from x and $\dot x$ to u of the system $\ddot x=\sigma_0(-x-\dot x-(\dot x)^3+u)$ with $x(0)= \dot x(0)=0$, are finite.