Lecture 5
The main stages of the multidimensional FEM application. The Lagrange
elements it the triangle. The Lagrange elements it the rectangle.
13 The main stages of the multidimensional
FEM application
As well as for the one-dimensional case, we can formulate few stages of the
FEM construction in the multidimensional case. We would like to note that
their relative complexity and importance are not necessary the same as for
one-dimensional case. These stages are:
• The variational formulation of the problem in the domain Ω.
The problem should be formulated as the variational equation
A(v, u) = (v, f)+ < v, β > for all v ∈ H. (50)
In this equation we have explicitly included the boundary conditions
with the function β. The accurate work with the boundary condition is
considerably more complicated here comparing to the one dimensional
case, mainly due to the domain triangulation.
• The domain triangulation.
The triangulation in the one-dimensional case is trivial as any interval
can be exactly divided into an arbitrary number of elements. In the
multidimensional case, the triangulation is a complicated geometrical
problem. Furthermore, this problem often cannot be solved exactly.
For example, the domain with a curved boundary ∂Ω cannot be exactly
triangulated into triangles or rectangles. Therefore, we have here a new
type of errors, so-called triangulation errors.
• The construction of the elemental stiffness matrices and load
vectors.
In the s ame manner as for the one-dimensional case, we reduce the
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