Past exam of the finite element methods for partial differential equations course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 3 / a / Solution

The infinitesimal strain tensor $\epsilon (v)=\frac{1}{2}(\nabla v+(\nabla v{)}^{\mathsf{T}})$ and the divergence are linear in $v$. Consequently the given $a$ is a symmetric bilinear form, andFor a matrix-valued function, $\Vert \cdot {\Vert }_0$ here uses the Frobenius inner product pointwise and then the L2 norm. All expressions are finite for $v\in H^1(\Omega ;{\mathbb{R}}^3)$.

Expand the quadratic term at $\theta v+(1-\theta )w$. The linearity of $\ell$ cancels its contribution to the difference, givingFor $0\le \theta \le 1$, this is nonnegative. Thereforeso $J$ is a convex functional on the whole Sobolev space. No boundary condition is needed for this conclusion. The argument uses nonnegativity of the quadratic term; uniqueness on the zero-boundary Sobolev space will instead use the Korn inequality in part (b).