Exact Null Controllability of a Nonlinear Thermoelastic Contact Problem

We study the controllability properties of a nonlinear parabolic system that models the temperature evolution of a one-dimensional thermoelastic rod that may come into contact with a rigid obstacle. Basically the system dynamics is described by a one-dimensional nonlocal heat equation with a nonlinear and nonlocal boundary condition of Newmann type. We focus on the control problem and treat the case when the control is distributed over the whole space domain. In this case the system is proved to be exactly null controllable provided the parameters of the system are smooth. The proof is based on changing the control variable and using Aubin's Compactness Lemma to obtain an invariant set for the linearized controllability map. Then, by proving that the found solution is sufficiently smooth, we get the null controllability for the original system. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]