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In this paper, we investigate an optimal boundary control problem for a two dimensional simplified Ericksen--Leslie system modelling the incompressible nematic liquid crystal flows. The hydrodynamic system consists of the Navier--Stokes equations for the fluid velocity coupled with a convective Ginzburg--Landau type equation for the averaged molecular orientation. The fluid velocity is assumed to satisfy a no-slip boundary condition, while the molecular orientation is subject to a time-dependent Dirichlet boundary condition that corresponds to the strong anchoring condition for liquid crystals. We first establish the existence of optimal boundary controls. Then we show that the control-to-state operator is Fr\'echet differentiable between appropriate Banach spaces and derive first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality involving the adjoint state variables.

In this work we are interested in estimating the size of a cavity D immersed in a bounded domain \Omega, contained in R^d, d=2,3, filled with a viscous fluid governed by the Stokes system, by means of velocity and Cauchy forces on the external boundary of \Omega. More precisely, we establish some lower and upper bounds in terms of the difference between the external measurements when the obstacle is present and without the object. The proof of the result is based on interior regularity results and quantitative estimates of unique continuation for the solution of the Stokes system.