A Semi-Definite Programming Approach to Stability Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Equations

We consider the stability analysis of a large class of linear 1-D PDEs with polynomial data. This class of PDEs contains, as examples, parabolic and hyperbolic PDEs with spatially varying coefficients and systems of in-domain/boundary coupled PDEs. Our approach is Lyapunov based which allows us to reduce the stability problem to verification of integral inequalities on the subspaces of Hilbert spaces. Then, using the fundamental theorem of calculus and Green's theorem, we construct a polynomial optimization problem to verify the integral inequalities. Constraining the solution of the polynomial optimization problem to belong to the set of sum-of-squares polynomials subject to affine constraints allows us to use semi-definite programming to algorithmically construct Lyapunov certificates of stability for the systems under consideration. We also provide numerical results of the application of the proposed method on different types of PDEs.