Numerical investigation of optimal control of induction heating processes (Q5950119)

The authors consider optimal control problems arising in induction heating processes. They are mainly concerned with two classes of such processes: uniform heating and metal hardening. The cost functions are chosen according to these classes. The control parameters are the inductor shape (assumed to be thin), the frequency, the current voltage and the heating duration. The induction heating model has two-dimensional Cartesian geometry. The numerical scheme is given as well as numerical experiments for practical applications. The outline of the paper is as follows. In Section 2 the authors describe the state equations as a two-dimensional electromagnetic problem. Section 3 presents the two types of optimal control problems. Section 4 gives the optimality system to solve. Section 5 describes the numerical method used to solve the optimality systems and gives the results of some numerical experiments. Finally, Section 6 gives some concluding remarks about possible generalizations of the model.