Shape optimization and free boundaries

de Michel C. Delfour, Gert Sabidussi

Shape optimization deals with problems where the design or control variable is no longer a vector of parameters or functions but the shape of a geometric domain. They include engineering applications to shape and structural optimization, but also original applications to image segmentation, control theory, stabilization of membranes and plates by boundary variations, etc. Free and moving boundary problems arise in an impressingly wide range of new and challenging applications to change of phase. The class of problems which are amenable to this approach can arise from such diverse disciplines as combustion, biological growth, reactive geological flows in porous media, solidification, fluid dynamics, electrochemical machining, etc. The objective and orginality of this NATO-ASI was to bring together theories and examples from shape optimization, free and moving boundary problems, and materials with microstructure which are fundamental to static and dynamic domain and boundary problems.