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Monotone Iterations for Elliptic Variational Inequalities


SC 98-10 Ralf Kornhuber: Monotone Iterations for Elliptic Variational Inequalities Appeared in: I. Athanasopoulos, G. Makrakis, J. Rodriques (eds.) Free Boundary Problems, Theory and Applications


Abstract: A wide range of free boundary problems occurring in engineering andindustry can be rewritten as a minimization problem for astrictly convex, piecewise smooth but non-differentiable energy functional.The fast solution of related discretized problemsis a very delicate question, because usual Newton techniquescannot be applied. We propose a new approach based on convex minimization and constrained Newton type linearization. While convex minimization provides global convergence of the overall iteration, the subsequent constrained Newton type linearization is intended to accelerate the convergence speed. We present a general convergence theory and discuss several applications.
Keywords: finite elements, multigrid methods, variational inequalities
MSC: 65N55, 65K10, 49M20, 49M15