Numerical variational methods applied to cylinder buckling

We review and compare different computational variational methods applied to a system of fourth order equations that arises as a model of cylinder buckling. We describe both the discretization and implementation, in particular how to deal with a one-dimensional null space. We show that we can construct many different solutions from a complex energy surface. We examine numerically convergence in the spatial discretization and in the domain size. Finally we give a physical interpretation of some of the solutions found. © 2008 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.