Boundary Stabilization of Quasilinear Parabolic PDEs that Blow Up in Open Loop for Arbitrarily Small Initial Conditions

Abstract

We propose a novel framework for stabilization, with an estimate of the region of attraction, of quasilinear parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs) that exhibit finite-time blow-up phenomena when null boundary inputs are imposed. Using Neumann-type boundary controllers, which are cubic polynomials in boundary measurements, we ensure L2 exponential stability of the origin with an estimate of the region of attraction, boundedness and exponential decay towards zero of the state's max norm, well-posedness, as well as positivity of solutions starting from positive initial conditions. Unlike existing methods, our approach handles nonlinear state-dependent diffusion, convection, and reaction terms. In many cases, our estimate of the size of the region of attraction is shown to expand unboundedly as diffusion increases. Our controllers can be implemented as Neumann, Dirichlet, or mixed-type boundary conditions. Numerical simulations validate the effectiveness of our approach in preventing finite-time blow up.