This document may be downloaded, read, stored and printed for your own use within the limits of § 53 UrhG but it may not be distributed via the internet or passed on to external parties.Dieses Dokument darf im Rahmen von § 53 UrhG zum eigenen Gebrauch kostenfrei heruntergeladen, gelesen, gespeichert und ausgedruckt, aber nicht im Internet bereitgestellt oder an Außenstehende weitergegeben werden.Mielke, AlexanderStefanelli, Ulisse2016-03-242019-06-2820090946-8633https://doi.org/10.34657/3481https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/2083We investigate a global-in-time variational approach to abstract evolution by means of the weighted energy-dissipation functionals proposed by Mielke & Ortiz in ``A class of minimum principles for characterizing the trajectories of dissipative systems''. In particular, we focus on gradient flows in Hilbert spaces. The main result is the convergence of minimizers and approximate minimizers of these functionals to the unique solution of the gradient flow. Sharp convergence rates are provided and the convergence analysis is combined with time-discretization. Applications of the theory to various classes of parabolic PDE problems are presented. In particular, we focus on two examples of microstructure evolution from S. Conti and M. Ortiz ``Minimum principles for the trajectories of systems governed by rate problems'application/pdfeng510Variational principlegradient flowconvergenceReport