Analysis of a system of nonlocal conservation laws for multi-commodity flow on networks

Abstract

We consider a system of scalar nonlocal conservation laws on networks that model a highly re-entrant multi-commodity manufacturing system as encountered in semi-conductor production. Every single commodity is modeled by a nonlocal conservation law, and the corresponding PDEs are coupled via a collective load, the work in progress. We illustrate the dynamics for two commodities. In the applications, directed acyclic networks naturally occur, therefore this type of networks is considered. On every edge of the network we have a system of coupled conservation laws with nonlocal velocity. At the junctions the right hand side boundary data of the foregoing edges is passed as left hand side boundary data to the following edges and PDEs. For distributing junctions, where we have more than one outgoing edge, we impose time dependent distribution functions that guarantee conservation of mass. We provide results of regularity, existence and well-posedness of the multicommodity network model for Lp-, BV - and W1;p-data. Moreover, we define an L2-tracking type objective and show the existence of minimizers that solve the corresponding optimal control problem.