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In article <yg!31aq@rpi.edu> sassoj@aix.rpi.edu (John J. Sasso Jr.) writes:
>
>    The Galerkin method, which is used to approximate solutions to differential
>   equations, appears to be a pretty interesting technique.  However, I am 
>   not too knowledgable about it, so I'd like to know what is its advantages
>   and disadvantages.  Also, how does it fair against nonlinear ODEs and PDEs,
>   which tend to have chaotic solutions.  If anyone has any good introductory
>   references to the Galerkin method, I would like to know about them.
>
>                          -- John

Galerkin method is a particular type of weighted residual technique in
which the shape (trial) functions themselves are used as weighting
functions. There are several different types of weighted residual methods
such as point collocation, subdomain collocation, least squares, and
Galerkin. These are all powerful techniques, and are very simple to
implement in finite element analysis because you don't have to find a
variational formulation for nonstructural problems. Galerkin method is the
most popular weighted residual method in finite element analysis, and it
can be proved that if the problem has a classical variational form,
Galerkin method will give the exact same results as a variational technique
such as Rayleigh-Ritz.

Look in "The Finite Element Method" by Zienkiewicz for more details about
this method.
-- 
Pardeep K. Bhatti                         pkbhatti@kopth004.delcoelect.com
Delco Electronics Corporation
GM Hughes Electronics
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