6.2.

1 WEAK FORM
The first step in Galerkin FEM is to obtain the weak
form of the differential equation. For this purpose,
we multiply the residual of this differential equation
by a weight function w and integrate it by part so as
to evenly distribute the order of differentiation on v
and w. In the weak form, both v and w will be
having the derivatives upto the second order only.
Carrying out the integration by parts two times, we
obtain
432224322200000ddddddddddddddlllllvvvwwvEIqw
xEIwEIEIxqwxxxxxxx⎛⎞−=−+−⎜⎟⎝⎠∫∫ (6.2)
Here, l is the length of the beam. We have skipped
certain steps in writing equation (6.2). You are
supposed to verify its correctness by doing it
yourself.
In the weak form, if we put w equal to δv, we can get
the variational form. Then, seeing the terms on the
boundary, we can recognize, that at x=0 and l:
33dEither0or=0dvEIvxδ= (6.3)
and
22ddEither0or=0ddvvEIxxδ= (6.4)
The first boundary condition in each of the
equations (6.3-6.4) is called the natural boundary
condition, whilst the boundary conditions of having
0 variation in the deflection v and slope dv/dx are
called the essential (geometric) boundary condition.
From the strength of materials, recall that EI
d2v/dx2 is the bending moment and EI d3v/dx3 is
the negative of the shear force. (The sign
convention for the bending moment and shear
force may differ from book to book.)