A computational study of the representation problem for flow control (Q4386863)

A boundary control problem for a two dimensional thermal convection loop is considered, which consists of a viscous fluid contained in a circular pipe standing in a vertical plane. When the walls of the pipe are heated from below, a temperature gradient is caused by thermal expansion and the fluid tends to flow. The viscosity and thermal diffusivity resists these motions. When dissipative terms are overcome by the buoyancy forces, fluid motion is created, which is called buoyancy driven free convection. In this paper, a simplified version of this problem is considered making use of the Boussinesq model, for which all fluid properties are assumed to be constant except the density in the buoyancy term and the body force is due only to gravitational acceleration and to the buoyancy force. The system of equations is written in an abstract form and LQR feedback control has been studied. Numerical results of the analysis are presented making use of a finite element scheme to discretize the space.