Absolute stability via boundary control of a semilinear parabolic PDE

We consider the problem of achieving global absolute stability of an unstable equilibrium solution of a semilinear dissipative parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) through boundary control. The state space of the system is extended in order to write the action of the boundary control as an unbounded operator in an abstract evolution equation. Absolute stability via boundary control is accomplished by analyzing a control Lyapunov function based on the infinite-dimensional dynamics and applying a finite-dimensional linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller. Sufficient conditions for absolute stability of the infinite-dimensional system are established by the feasibility of two finite-dimensional linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Numerical results are presented for a Dirichlet boundary controlled system, however the analysis in this work applies to Nuemann and Robin type boundary controllers as well.