CLASS OF SINGULARLY PERTURBED, NON-LINEAR, FIXED-ENDPOINT CONTROL PROBLEMS

Singular perturbation techniques are applied to a class of nonlinear, fixed-endpoint control problems to decompose the full-order problem into three lower-order problems, namely, the reduced problem and the left and right boundary-layer problems. The boundary-layer problems are linear-quadratic and, contrary to previous singular perturbation works, the reduced problem has a simple formulation. The solutions of these lower-order problems are combined to yield an approximate solution to the full nonlinear problem. Based on the properties of the lower-order problems, the full problem is shown to possess an asymptotic series solution. © 1979 Plenum Publishing Corporation.