abstract
- Carlos Balsa was supported by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021). Sílvio Gama was partially supported by (i) CMUP, member of LASI, which is financed by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project with reference UIDB/00144/2020, and (ii) project SNAP NORTE- 01-0145- FEDER-000085, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE2020) under Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement.
- Vortex points on a sphere can be considered as simplified models of atmospheric circulation. The use of these models allows the simulation of displacements of passive particles advected by vortex flow. In this study, a strategy is proposed to determine the optimal trajectory between two given points on the sphere, taking into account that the displacement occurs due to a vortex flow. It is an alternative numerical strategy to the methods proposed by the theory of optimal control. The original problem is discretized into a constrained optimization problem. The solution of this problem by two alternative numerical optimization methods shows that the strategy is feasible and leads to optimal or quasi-optimal solutions.