Finite Element Analysis. Barna Szabó
any perturbation of u by
(1.39)
Therefore we have
where the last two terms are zero because
and, substituting this into eq. (1.40), we get
(1.41)
Since this holds for all
(1.42)
minimizes the potential energy defined by eq. (1.38). This is the strong form of the problem.
Remark 1.2 The procedure in Example 1.2 is used in the calculus of variations for identifying the differential equation, known as the Euler9‐Lagrange10 equation, the solution of which maximizes or minimizes a functional. In this example the solution minimizes the potential energy on the space
Remark 1.3 Whereas the strain energy is always positive, the potential energy may be positive, negative or zero.
1.3 Approximate solutions
The trial and test spaces defined in the preceding section are infinite‐dimensional, that is, they span infinitely many linearly independent functions. To find an approximate solution, we construct finite‐dimensional subspaces denoted, respectively, by
where ϕi (
Similarly,
(1.44)
where ri is defined in eq. (1.12). Therefore we can write