Weighted energy-dissipation functionals for doubly nonlinear evolution ✩

This paper is concerned with the Weighted Energy-Dissipation (WED) functional approach to doubly nonlinear evolutionary problems. This approach consists in minimizing (WED) functionals defined over entire trajectories. We present the features of the WED variational formalism and analyze the related Euler–Lagrange problems. Moreover, we check that minimizers of the WED functionals converge to the corresponding limiting doubly nonlinear evolution. Finally, we present a discussion on the functional convergence of sequences of WED functionals and present some application of the abstract theory to nonlinear PDEs. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.