Onsager principle as a tool for approximation

Onsager principle is the variational principle proposed by Onsager in his celebrated paper on the reciprocal relation. The principle has been shown to be useful in deriving many evolution equations in soft matter physics. Here the principle is shown to be useful in solving such equations approximately. Two examples are discussed: the diffusion dynamics and gel dynamics. Both examples show that the present method is novel and gives new results which capture the essential dynamics in the system.