Well-posedness and exact controllability of the mass balance equations for an extrusion process

In this paper, we study the well-posedness and exact controllability of a physical model for a food extrusion process in the isothermal case. The model expresses the mass balance in the extruder chamber and consists of a hyperbolic Partial Differential Equation (PDE) and a nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) whose dynamics describes the evolution of a moving interface. By suitable change of coordinates and fixed point arguments, we prove the existence, uniqueness and regularity of the solution, and finally the exact controllability of the coupled system.