Lecture Notes on Mathematical Theory of Finite Elements
Leszek F. Demkowicz MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF FINITE ELEMENTS Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX. May 2020 Preface This monograph is based on my personal lecture notes for the graduate course on Mathematical Theory of Finite Elements (EM394H) that I have been teaching at ICES (now the Oden Institute), at the University of Texas at Austin, in the years 2005-2019. The class has been offered in two versions. The first version is devoted to a study of the energy spaces corresponding to the exact grad-curl-div sequence. The class is rather involved mathematically, and I taught it only every 3-4 years, see [27] for the corresponding lecture notes. The second, more popular version is covered in the presented notes. The primal focus of my lectures has been on the concept of discrete stability and variational problems set up in the energy spaces forming the exact sequence: H1-, H(curl)-, H(div)-, and L2-spaces. From the ap- plication point of view, discussions are wrapped around the classical model problems: diffusion-convection- reaction, elasticity (static and dynamic), linear acoustics, and Maxwell equations. I do not cover transient problems, i.e., all discussed wave propagation problems are formulated in the frequency domain. In the exposition, I follow the historical path and my own personal path of learning the theory. We start with coer- cive problems for which the stability can be taken for granted, and the convergence analysis reduces to the interpolation error estimation. I cover H1−;H(curl)−;H(div)−, and L2-conforming finite elements and construct commuting interpolation operators.
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