On 01/18/2014 04:12 AM, Jan Blechta wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:54:27 -0800
> Nikolaus Rath <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> On 01/09/2014 11:19 AM, Jan Blechta wrote:
>>>>>> I would like to solve the following equation (which does not
>>>>>> directly come from a PDE):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> \int dV f(x) * \partial_r g(x) = \int dA u(x) * \partial_n g(x)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> f(x) is known, u(x) is unknown, and the equation should hold for
>>>>>> any g(x) that satisfy Laplace's equation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In other words, I'm looking for a weight function u(x), such that
>>>>>> the surface integral of the normal derivative of any g(x)
>>>>>> (weighted by u) gives the same result as the volume integral of
>>>>>> the radial derivative of
>>>>>> g(x) (weighted by the known function f(x)).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is it possible to do this with FEniCS?
>>>>>> It seems that the equation itself is easy to express in UFL, but
>>>>>> I am not sure how do deal with the fact that there are no
>>>>>> boundary conditions, and that any trial function g(x) needs to
>>>>>> satisfy Laplace's equation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. Look at the demo
>>>>>
>>>>>      demo/documented/neumann-poisson
>>>>>
>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> However, even after going through the example, I'm not sure how I
>>>> can tell FEniCS to use only trial functions satisfying Laplace's
>>>> equation. In the example, the constraint on the test functions
>>>> seems to fix just the constant offset. It's not clear to me to
>>>> extend this to something more complicated, where the constraint
>>>> itself takes the form of a PDE. Do you think you could explain in
>>>> a bit more detail?
>>>
>>> You change the constraint to Laplace problem, and the space R for
>>> Lagrange multiplier and corresponding test function to some
>>> appropriate FE subspace of Sobolev space W_0^{1,2}. Hint:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_multipliers_on_Banach_spaces
>>
>>
>> Alright, I did quite a bit of reading now (mostly Gockenbach, also
>> looked into Bhatti, Reddy and Strang), and I think I got the part
>> about natural/essential vs Neumann/Dirichlet boundary conditions (and
>> also got a lot more understanding of the finite element method
>> itself). Thanks for the pointers!
>>
>>
>> However, I am still struggling to combine the finite element method
>> with Lagrange multipliers. I think I have a good handle on Lagrange
>> multipliers for constrained optimization of a scalar function or
>> integral, but I fail to transfer this to FE.
> 
> Ok, potential for Poisson problem is
> 
> \Psi(u) = 1/2 \int |\nabla u|^2 - L(u) 

Ah, the potential is the starting point. Thanks!

> So if you want to minimize \Psi on V = H^1(\Omega) subject to constraint
> \int u = 0, you do can try to find a minimum (u, c) \in (V \times R) of
> 
> \Psi(u) - c \int u
> 

My apologies if I'm slow, but why would I want to find a minimum (u,c)
\in (V * R)? It seems to me that I don't want to find a specific value c
-- I want a minimum u \in V \forall c.



Best,
-Nikolaus

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