In this paper, optimal control problems subject to a nonlinear scalar conservation law are
studied. Such optimal control problems are challenging both at the continuous and at the discrete
level since the control-to-state operator poses difficulties as it is, e.g., not differentiable. Therefore
discretization of the underlying optimal control problem should be designed with care. Here the
discretize-then-optimize approach is employed where first the full discretization of the objective
function as well as the underlying PDE is considered. Then, the derivative of the reduced objective
is obtained by using an adjoint calculus. In this paper total variation diminishing Runge-Kutta
(TVD-RK) methods for the time discretization of such problems are studied. TVD-RK methods,
also called strong stability preserving (SSP), are originally designed to preserve total variation of
the discrete solution. It is proven in this paper that providing an SSP state scheme, is enough to
ensure stability of the discrete adjoint. However requiring SSP for both discrete state and adjoint is
too strong. Also approximation properties that the discrete adjoint inherits from the discretization
of the state equation are studied. Moreover order conditions are derived. In addition, optimal
choices with respect to CFL constant are discussed and numerical experiments are presented.
The inverse problem of identifying the friction coefficient in an isothermal semilinear Euler system is considered. Adopting a Bayesian approach, the goal is to identify the distribution of the quantity of interest based on a finite number of noisy measurements of the pressure at the boundaries of the domain. First well-posedness of the underlying non-linear PDE system is shown using semigroup theory, and then Lipschitz continuity of the solution operator with respect to the
friction coefficient is established. Based on the Lipschitz property, well-posedness of the resulting Bayesian inverse problem for the identification of the friction coefficient is inferred. Numerical tests for scalar and distributed parameters are performed to validate the theoretical results.