tual control method, recently introduced to approximate elliptic and parabolic problems by overlapping domain decompositions, is proposed here for heterogeneous problems. Precisely, we address the coupling of an advection equation with a diffusion-advection equation, with the aim of modelling boundary layers. We investigate both overlapping and non-overlapping (disjoint) subdomain decompositions. In the latter case, several cost functions are considered and a numerical assessment of our theoretical conclusions is carried out.