A short remark on Kalaawy's variational principle for plasma

作者：Li, Ya; He, Chun-Hui^*

来源：International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat and Fluid Flow, 2017, 27(10): 2203-2206.

DOI：10.1108/HFF-08-2016-0298

• Plasma
• Variational theory
• Burger equation
• Semi-inverse method

Purpose - This paper aims to show how to establish a variational formulation directly from the governing equations. A modified Burger equation arising in dusty plasma is used as an example to show the derivation process.
Design/methodology/approach - Ji-Huan He's semi-inverse method is adopted in the derivation process. To effectively use the semi-inverse method, a potential function is introduced, and the trial functional is constructed with some nonzero parameters, which are such identified that the stationary conditions satisfy the governing equations.
Findings - The derivation is simple, and the obtained variational principle is conciser than that obtained by Kalaawy, who introduced two special functions.
Originality/value - This paper suggests an effective approach to the inverse problem of the calculus of variations.

• 出版日期2017
• 单位苏州大学