An all-at-once approach for the optimal control of the unsteady Burgers equation

Abstract

We apply an all-at-once method for the optimal control of the unsteady Burgers equation. The nonlinear Burgers equation is discretized in time using the semi-implicit discretization and the resulting first order optimality conditions are solved iteratively by Newton’s method. The discretize then optimize approach is used, because it leads to a symmetric indefinite saddle point problem. Numerical results for the distributed unconstrained and control constrained problems illustrate the performance of the all-at-once approach with semi-implicit time discretization.