The international Conference on Optimal Control of Partial Differential Equations
was held at the Wasserschloss Klaffenbach, a recently renovated moated castle near
Chemnitz (Germany), from April 20 to 25,1998. This conference has been an
activity of the IFIP working group WG7.2. The organizers greatfully acknowledge the
generous financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the
Sachsisches Staatsministerium fur Wissenschaft und Kunst, the European
Community, the LUK GmbH& Co. (Buhl, Germany), and the Technische Universitdt
Chemnitz.
The conference has been attended by more than 60 scientists from 15 countries.
The scientific program included 40 invited talks in the area of optimization, optimal
control and controllability, shape optimization and related mechanical modelling.
The underlying idea was to enhance the flow of information in this vast area of
important industrial applications between theorists and numerical analysts, and,
hence, the topics of the talks have been selected towards a balanced presentation
of the overall field. This volume contains 27 refereed original papers which can be
classified as follows: 9 papers in controllablity, stabilizability and identifiability, 7
papers in optimal control, 6 papers in shape optimization and 5 papers on general
modelling and qualitative issues related to partial differential equations. About
one half of the papers can be classified as theoretical work, while the other part is
devoted to algorithmic procedures and their numerical implementation.