The published material represents the outgrowth of teaching analytical optimization to aerospace engineering graduate students. To make the material available to the widest audience, the prerequisites are limited to calculus and differential equations. It is also a book about the mathematical aspects of optimal control theory. It was developed in an engineering environment from material learned by the author while applying it to the solution of engineering problems. One goal of the book is to help engineering graduate students learn the fundamentals which are needed to apply the methods to engineering problems. The examples are from geometry and elementary dynamical systems so that they can be understood by all engineering students. Another goal of this text is to unify optimization by using the differential of calculus to create the Taylor series expansions needed to derive the optimality conditions of optimal control theory.

Inhalt

1 Introduction to Optimization.- I. Parameter Optimization.- 2 Unconstrained Minimization.- 3 Constrained Minimization: Equality Constraints.- 4 Constrained Minimization: Inequality Constraints.- 5 Minimization Using Matrix Notation.- II. Optimal Control Theory.- 6 Differentials in Optimal Control.- 7 Controllability.- 8 Simplest Optimal Control Problem.- 9 Fixed Final Time: First Differential.- 10 Fixed Final Time: Tests for a Minimum.- 11 Fixed Final Time: Second Differential.- 12 Fixed Final Time Guidance.- 13 Free Final Time.- 14 Parameters.- 15 Free Initial Time and States.- 16 Control Discontinuities.- 17 Path Constraints.- III. Approximate Solutions.- 18 Approximate Solutions of Algebraic Equations.- 19 Approximate Solutions of Differential Equations.- 20 Approximate Solutions of Optimal Control Problems.- 21 Conversion into a Parameter Optimization Problem.- Appendix: A First and Second Differentials by Taylor Series Expansion.- References.