Exploiting Stochasticity for the Control of Transitions in Gyre Flows

Abstract

We present a control strategy to control the inter-gyre switching time of an agent operating in a gyre flow. The proposed control strategy exploits the stochasticity of the underlying environment to affect inter-gyre transitions. We show how control can be used to enhance or abate the mean escape time and present a strategy to achieve a desired mean escape time. We show that the proposed control strategy can achieve any desired escape time in an interval governed by the maximum available control. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy in simulations.