ON NONLINEAR OPTIMAL CONTROL PROBLEMS WITH CONTROL APPEARING LINEARLY.

Abstract

In a classical paper of 1919, Goddard posed the problem of finding the thrust program so that a specified payload is delivered in vertical flight to a desired altitude with least fuel expenditure. This and other control problems are considered in this thesis. Pontryagin's maximum principle, a necessary condition, is the primary tool employed. For Goddard's problem and other control problems considered, the control appears linearly in the system of equations. This permits the introduction of a switching function that can be used to give a decomposition of the optimal control into subarcs. A more natural way to decompose the optimal control is into subarcs for which either the control assumes boundary points or interior points of the control region. According to the former method, subarcs are called S-subarcs and according to the latter method, T-subarcs.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1965
Accession Number
AD0616790

Entities

People

  • Herman Munick

Organizations

  • Grumman

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Altitude
  • Boundaries
  • Decomposition
  • Equations
  • Mathematics
  • Switching

Readers

  • Control Systems Engineering.
  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Robotics and Automation.