Control synthesis for temperature maintaining process in a heat supply problem (Q2215571)

The authors investigate a coolant flow in a one-dimensional tube with temperature sensors on its walls. The coolant exchanges heat with hot steam surrounding the tube through these walls and after making a loop returns back to the tube inlet. The problem is to find the number and the positions of sensors that will maintain a minimal difference between the coolant temperature and some desired value. From the mathematical point of view, the heat transfer in the tube is described by a hyperbolic equation of the first order. Its boundary condition contains time delay as the coolant needs some time to leave the tube, make a loop inside the heat supply system and return back. The difference between the actual temperature and the desired one is described by an integral functional with a regularization term. Its minimization allows to find the coordinates and other parameters of the sensors. The authors use a gradient projection method to solve the optimization problem and prove the theorem allowing to find the gradient of the functional. The optimization due to the number of sensors is discussed in the paper, too. The results of the numerical experiment demonstrate both the method's convergence and its resistance to noise in the initial data.