Serving the Numerical Simulation community since 1989 
Variational Crimes
From the beginning of FEM acceptance, a significant communication gap existed between the engineering and mathematical communities. Engineers did not understand why mathematicians would worry so much about the number of square-integrable derivatives, and mathematicians did not understand how it is possible that engineers can find useful solutions even when the rules of variational calculus are violated (variational crimes). This gap widened over the years: On one hand, the art of finite element modeling became an integral part of engineering practice. On the other hand, the science of finite element analysis became an established branch of applied mathematics.
