Feedback stabilization of a thermal fluid system with mixed boundary control

We consider the problem of local exponential stabilization of the nonlinear Boussinesq equations with control acting on portion of the boundary. In particular, given a steady state solution on an bounded and connected domain ^R2, we show that a finite number of controls acting on a part of the boundary through Neumann/Robin boundary conditions is sufficient to stabilize the full nonlinear equations in a neighborhood of this steady state solution. Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed on the rest of the boundary. We prove that a stabilizing feedback control law can be obtained by solving a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) problem for the linearized Boussinesq equations. Numerical result are provided for a 2D problem to illustrate the ideas.