An indirect numerical method for the solution of a class of optimal control problems with singular arcs

An indirect numerical method is presented that solves a class of optimal control problems that have a singular arc occurring after an initial nonsingular arc. This method iterates on the subset of initial costate variables that enforce the junction conditions for switching to a singular arc, and the time of switching off of the singular arc to a final nonsingular arc, to reduce a terminal error function of the final conditions to zero. This results in the solution to the two-point boundary-value problem obtained using the minimum principle and some necessary conditions for singular arcs. The main advantage of this method is that the exact solution to the two-point boundary-value problem is obtained. The main disadvantage is that the sequence of controls for the problem must be known to apply this method. Two illustrative examples are presented.