Rubio, Diana2014-03-142014-03-141997-04-21etd-1938102939721181http://hdl.handle.net/10919/30330We consider the problem of controlling a thermal convection flow by feedback. The system is governed by the Boussinesq approximation of the coupled set of Navier-Stokes and heat equations. The control is applied through Dirichlet boundary conditions. We concentrate on a two-dimensional mode and use a semidiscrete Galerkin scheme for numerical computations. We construct both a linear control and a non-linear quadratic control and apply them to the full non-linear model. First, we test these controllers on a one-mode approximation. The convergence of the numerical scheme is analyzed. We also consider LQR control for a two-dimensional heat equation.In Copyrightsemigroupsdynamical systemsboundary controlboussinesq approximationDissertationhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-1938102939721181/