  We present the mixed Galerkin discretization of distributed parameter
port-Hamiltonian systems. On the prototypical example of hyperbolic systems of
two conservation laws in arbitrary spatial dimension, we derive the main
contributions: (i) A weak formulation of the underlying geometric
(Stokes-Dirac) structure with a segmented boundary according to the causality
of the boundary ports. (ii) The geometric approximation of the Stokes-Dirac
structure by a finite-dimensional Dirac structure is realized using a mixed
Galerkin approach and power-preserving linear maps, which define minimal
discrete power variables. (iii) With a consistent approximation of the
Hamiltonian, we obtain finite-dimensional port-Hamiltonian state space models.
By the degrees of freedom in the power-preserving maps, the resulting family of
structure-preserving schemes allows for trade-offs between centered
approximations and upwinding. We illustrate the method on the example of
Whitney finite elements on a 2D simplicial triangulation and compare the
eigenvalue approximation in 1D with a related approach.
