A Convex Approach for Stability Analysis of Coupled PDEs with Spatially Dependent Coefficients

Abstract: In this paper, we present a methodology for stability analysis of a general class of systems defined by coupled Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) with spatially dependent coefficients and a general class of boundary conditions. This class includes PDEs of the parabolic, elliptic and hyperbolic type as well as coupled systems without boundary feedback. Our approach uses positive matrices to parameterize a new class of SOS Lyapunov functionals and combines these with a parametrization of projection operators which allow us to enforce positivity and negativity on subspaces of L_2. The result allows us to express Lyapunov stability conditions as a set of Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) constraints which can be constructed using SOSTOOLS and tested using Semi-Definite Programming (SDP) solvers such as SeDuMi or Mosek. The methodology is tested using several simple numerical examples and compared with results obtained from simulation using a standard form of numerical discretization.