Abstract

This article develops duality principles applicable to originally non-convex primal variational formulations. More specifically, as a first application through a D.C. approach, we establish a convex dual variational formulation for a non-linear Kirchhoff-Love plate model. The results are obtained through basic tools of functional analysis, calculus of variations, duality and optimization theory in infinite dimensional spaces. We emphasize such a convex dual formulation obtained may be applied to a large class of similar models in the calculus of variations. Finally, in the last section, we develop analogous results for a related model in superconductivity.