Abstract
This paper deals with a singular control problem which appears in the optimal control of flow processes described by first-order partial differential equations. By applying Sirazetdinov's maximum principle to flow processes, optimal control and various conditions to be satisfied for the singular control are derived.
When system performance is evaluated at the outlet of a flow process, the following results are obtained.
i) The optimal control is attained by only one switching from a bang-bang operation to a singular one.
ii) The singular control is determined by the stational heat or mass balance at the outlet of the flow process.
By the use of quasilinearization technique, a numerical method is developed to calculate the singular control. To illustrate the present results, a continuous furnace under a radiative heat-transfer is analyzed.
