Dual analysis with general boundary conditions

The dual analysis concept was introduced by Fraeijs de Veubeke [1] as a consequence of upper and lower bounds of the energy. As such bounds exist only in those cases where one type of condition is homogeneous, it is commonly admitted that a dual error measure does not exist with general boundary conditions. This paper presents a re-examination of the dual error measure by a way which avoids any use of upper and lower bounds of the energy. It is found that such an error measure holds whatever the boundary conditions be. Furthermore, it is not necessary to obtain the approximate solutions by a Rayleigh-Ritz process, so that the second analysis, which seemed necessary in the original dual analysis concept, may be replaced by any admissible approximation. This implies the possibility of a dual error measure at a simple post-processor level.