Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2006 / iii / Paper 68 / 4 / b / Solution

Choose a partition $0=x_0<x_1<\cdots <x_N=1$, with the usual nodal piecewise-linear hat functions ${\varphi }_i$, including the half hats at the endpoints. Write $u_h={\sum }_{i=0}^N{U}_i{\varphi }_i$ with $U_0=1$. Differentiating the Ritz method energy with respect to $U_i$, $1\le i\le N$, givesOn an element $[a,b]$ of length $\ell$, its two basis functions are $(b-x)/\ell$ and $(x-a)/\ell$. Direct integration yields the element matrixFor example the first weighted diagonal is ${\int }_a^{b}x(b-x{)}^2/{\ell }^{2}dx=\ell (3a+b)/12$; the off-diagonal is ${\int }_a^{b}x(b-x)(x-a)/{\ell }^{2}dx=\ell (a+b)/12$. This gives the affine-weighted hat mass matrix and explicit equations on any partition by assembling adjacent elements.

For the uniform choice $h=1/N$, $x_i=ih$, the assembled interior equations areThe last node contributes only one element, so its equation isIn the first interior equation the known $U_0$ term moves to the right, giving $1/h-h^2/12$. For $N=1$ only the endpoint equation is needed. The last row enforces the weak Neumann boundary condition, so no artificial value outside the interval is introduced. The matrix on $U_1,\dots ,U_N$ is a symmetric positive-definite matrix: its quadratic form is $a(v_h,v_h)>0$ for every nonzero trial variation $v_h$. The discrete minimizer is therefore unique.