Research in control and estimation of distributed parameter systems encompasses a wide range of applications including both fundamental science and emerging technologies. The latter include smart materials (piezoceramics, shape memory alloys, magnetostrictives, electrorheological fluids) fabrication and testing, design of high-pressure chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactors for production of microelectronic surfaces (e.g., semiconductors), while the former include groundwater contamination cleanup and other environmental modeling questions, climatology, flow control, and fluid-structure interactions as well as more traditional topics in biology, mechanics, and acoustics. These expository papers provide substantial stimulus to both young researchers and experienced investigators in control theory. Includes a comprehensive and lucid presentation that relates frequency domain techniques to state-space or time domain approaches for infinite-dimensional systems including design of robust stabilizing and finite-dimensional controllers for infinite-dimensional systems. It focuses on these two approaches to control design in an integrated system theoretic framework. This is excellent reading for researchers in both the frequency domain and time domain control communities. In other articles, topics considered include pointwise control of distributed parameter systems, bounded and unbounded sensors and actuators, stabilization issues for large flexible structures, and an overview discussion of damping models for flexible structures.

22 papers on control of nonlinear partial differential equations highlight the area from a broad variety of viewpoints. They comprise theoretical considerations such as optimality conditions, relaxation, or stabilizability theorems, as well as the development and evaluation of new algorithms. A significant part of the volume is devoted to applications in engineering, continuum mechanics and population biology.

Consisting of 23 refereed contributions, this volume offers a broad and diverse view of current research in control and estimation of partial differential equations. Topics addressed include, but are not limited to - control and stability of hyperbolic systems related to elasticity, linear and nonlinear; - control and identification of nonlinear parabolic systems; - exact and approximate controllability, and observability; - Pontryagin's maximum principle and dynamic programming in PDE; and - numerics pertinent to optimal and suboptimal control problems. This volume is primarily geared toward control theorists seeking information on the latest developments in their area of expertise. It may also serve as a stimulating reader to any researcher who wants to gain an impression of activities at the forefront of a vigorously expanding area in applied mathematics.

Consisting of 16 refereed original contributions, this volume presents a diversified collection of recent results in control of distributed parameter systems. Topics addressed include - optimal control in fluid mechanics - numerical methods for optimal control of partial differential equations - modeling and control of shells - level set methods - mesh adaptation for parameter estimation problems - shape optimization Advanced graduate students and researchers will find the book an excellent guide to the forefront of control and estimation of distributed parameter systems.

The research detailed in this monograph was originally motivated by our interest in control problems involving partial and delay differential equations. Our attempts to apply control theory techniques to such prob lems in several areas of science convinced us that in the need for better and more detailed models of distributed/ continuum processes in biology and mechanics lay a rich, interesting, and challenging class of fundamen tal questions. These questions, which involve science and mathematics, are typical of those arising in inverse or parameter estimation problems. Our efforts on inverse problems for distributed parameter systems, which are infinite dimensional in the most common realizations, began about seven years ago at a time when rapid advances in computing capabilities and availability held promise for significant progress in the development of a practically useful as well as theoretically sound methodology for such problems. Much of the research reported in our presentation was not begun when we outlined the plans for this monograph some years ago. By publishing this monograph now, when only a part of the originally intended topics are covered (see Chapter VII in this respect), we hope to stimulate the research and interest of others in an area of scientific en deavor which has exceeded even our optimistic expectations with respect to excitement, opportunity, and stimulation. The computer revolution alluded to above and the development of new codes allow one to solve rather routinely certain estimation problems that would have been out of the question ten years ago.

In this unified account of the mathematical theory of distributed parameter systems (DPS), the authors cover all major aspects of the control, estimation, and identification of such systems, and their application in engineering problems. The first part of the book is devoted to the basic results in deterministic and stochastic partial differential equations, which are applied to the optimal control and estimation theories for DPS. Part two then applies this knowledge in an engineering setting, discussing optimal estimators, optimal sensor and actuator locations, and computational techniques.