Variational formulation of a damped Dirichlet impulsive problem

Abstract In this letter we introduce the concept of a weak solution for a damped linear equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions and impulses. We use the classical Lax–Milgram Theorem to reveal the variational structure of the problem and get the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions as critical points. This will allow us in the future to deal with the corresponding nonlinear problems and look for solutions as critical points of weakly lower semicontinuous functionals.