Functional Analysis and Boundary Value Problems: An Introductory Treatment (Pitman Monograph & Surveys in Pure & Applied Mathematics)

This book is addressed to students and researchers who require an introduction to functional analysis and its application to boundary-value problems. The material presented here provides a direct path to the study of weak or variational boundary-value problems and their approximation by the finite element method. A minimal mathematical background is assumed, so that the material is suitable for senior undergraduate or postgraduate students in engineering, the physical sciences and mathematics, as well as for researchers who wish to learn about the applications of functional analysis to the theory of partial differential equations and the finite element method. The book is divided into two Part I is an introduction to functional analysis while Part II covers elliptic boundary-value problems, variational methods of approximation, and the finite element method.