Mathematical programming has had important applications to broad classes of engineering design problems which can be modeled by means of equilibrium equations in a continuum. The aim of this research is to develop a conceptual connection between many diverse finite element methods which are numerical methods used to attack problems in continuum physics. The technique proposed to make this connection belongs to that field of mathematical programming called semi-infinite programming. It is expected that making such a connection will yield new computational methods for solving problems in a wide class of engineering problems such as elasticity plasticity.
