(1) fDipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Università di Udine, Via delle Scienze 208, 33100 Udine, Italy
Abstract:
We present a technique for the approximation of quadratic variational problems of the first order in spaces of piece-wise constant functions. The method adopts ideas from the theory of -convergence as a guideline, and it differs from more traditional non-conforming techniques because it is based on the introduction of a suitable sequence of discrete functionals to be minimized with no constraints and without requiring that the spline functions fulfill any patch test condition.