An ultraweak formulation of the Kirchhoff-Love plate bending model and DPG approximation

We develop and analyze an ultraweak variational formulation for a variant of the Kirchhoff-Love plate bending model. Based on this formulation, we introduce a discretization of the discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin type with optimal test functions (DPG). We prove well-posedness of the ultraweak formulation and quasi-optimal convergence of the DPG scheme. The variational formulation and its analysis require tools that control traces and jumps in $H^2$ (standard Sobolev space of scalar functions) and $H(\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v}\mathrm{D}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v})$ (symmetric tensor functions with $L_2$-components whose twice iterated divergence is in $L_2$), and their dualities. These tools are developed in two and three spatial dimensions. One specific result concerns localized traces in a dense subspace of $H(\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v}\mathrm{D}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v})$. They are essential to construct basis functions for an approximation of $H(\mathrm{d}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v}\mathrm{D}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{v})$. To illustrate the theory we construct basis functions of the lowest order and perform numerical experiments for a smooth and a singular model solution. They confirm the expected convergence behavior of the DPG method both for uniform and adaptively refined meshes.