Optimizing the Rate of Decay of Solutions of the Wave Equation Using Genetic Algorithms: A Counterexample to the Constant Damping Conjecture

  • Authors:
  • Pedro Freitas

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

We consider the problem of optimizing the rate of decay of solutions of the linear damped wave equation on a bounded interval. This corresponds to optimizing the spectral abscissa of the associated linear operator. By writing the damping term as a Fourier cosine series and obtaining some inequalities that the coefficients in this series have to satisfy in order that the spectral abscissa be larger than a real number $\alpha$, we are then able to use a genetic algorithm to obtain values of the spectral abscissa which are better than those given by the constant damping case. This provides a counterexample to the conjecture that the best possible decay was obtained for constant damping.