A boundary control problem for a possibly singular phase field system with dynamic boundary conditions

Abstract

This paper deals with an optimal control problem related to a phase field system of Caginalp type with a dynamic boundary condition for the temperature. The control placed in the dynamic boundary condition acts on a part of the boundary. The analysis carried out in this paper proves the existence of an optimal control for a general class of potentials, possibly singular. The study includes potentials for which the derivatives may not exist, these being replaced by well-defined subdifferentials. Under some stronger assumptions on the structure parameters and on the potentials (namely for the regular and the logarithmic case having single-valued derivatives), the first order necessary optimality conditions are derived and expressed in terms of the boundary trace of the first adjoint variable.