NEW FRONTIERS FOR CONTROL IN FLUID MECHANICS: A Renaissance approach

As traditional fields, such as controls, mathematics, and fluid mechanics, individually grow towards their maturity, many new opportunities for significant advances lie at their intersection. As a prime example, attempts at effective integration of control theory, Navier-Stokes mathematics, and fluid mechanics are still in their infancy. What is sorely needed is a balanced perspective and understanding in which one both considers flow physics (and the Navier-Stokes equation governing this physics) when designing control algorithms, and, conversely, the requirements and limitations of control algorithms when designing both reduced-order fluid models and the fluid-mechanical systems to be controlled themselves. Such a balanced perspective is elusive, however, as both the research establishment in general and universities in particular are accustomed only to the dissemination and teaching of component technologies in isolated fields. This lecture will briefly survey a few recent attempts at bridging some of the gaps between these disciplines.