9501036 Russell This project will support a joint exchange program involving Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and St. Petersburg State University in Russia. The purpose of this exchange program is to allow the participants to explore deep interconnections between theoretical developments in nonharmonic Fourier series and potential applications in the control, estimation and identification theory of distributed parameter systems. The fact that most recent advances in the theory of nonharmonic Fourier series have taken place in Russia and the former Soviet Union, while applications have enjoyed dramatic advances in the United States, makes this exchange program particularly timely. The program envisages five separate visits, two on the part of United States participants to Russia and three involving Russian visitors to the United States. The use of nonharmonic Fourier series methods in control, estimation and identification of distributed parameter systems, which dates back at least to 1963, is now of increasing importance because of sophisticated non- invasive state estimation techniques required for newly sophisticated advanced materials production and processing. Nonharmonic Fourier series techniques allow estimates of the interior state of a process to be generated from externally collected data on temperatures, concentrations, etc., without the need for invasive internal probing potentially interfering with the process.
