The ultra weak variational formulation of thin clamped plate problems

We develop a new numerical scheme for a fourth order elliptic partial differential equation based on Kirchhoffʼs thin plate theory. In particular we extend the ultra weak variational formulation (UWVF) to thin plate problems with clamped plate boundary conditions. The UWVF uses a finite element mesh and non-polynomial basis functions. After deriving the new method we then prove L 2 norm convergence on the boundary. Finally we investigate numerically the feasibility of the UWVF for both homogeneous and inhomogeneous problems and show examples of p- and h-convergence.