Optimal Control of an Interconnected SDE -Parabolic PDE System

Abstract: In this paper, we design a controller for an interconnected system where a linear Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) is actuated through a linear parabolic heat equation. These dynamics arise in various applications, such as coupled heat transfer systems and chemical reaction processes that are subject to disturbances. Our goal is to develop a computational method for approximating the controller that minimizes a quadratic cost associated with the state of the SDE component. To achieve this, we first perform a change of variables to shift the actuation inside the PDE domain and reformulate the system as a linear Stochastic Partial Differential Equation (SPDE). We use a spectral approximation of the Laplacian operator to discretize the coupled dynamics into a finite-dimensional SDE and compute the optimal control for this approximated system. The resulting control serves as an approximation of the optimal control for the original system. We then establish the convergence of the approximated optimal control and the corresponding closed-loop dynamics to their infinite-dimensional counterparts. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach.