Summary.
The Signorini problem describes the contact of a linearly elastic body with a rigid frictionless foundation. It is transformed into a saddle point problem of some augmented Lagrangian functional and then discretized by finite element methods. Optimal error estimates are obtained for general smooth domains which are not necessarily convex. The key ingredient in the analysis is a discrete inf-sup condition which guarantees the existence of the saddle point.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Received January 29, 1999 / Revised version received May 2, 2000 / Published online December 19, 2000
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chen, Z. On the augmented Lagrangian approach to Signorini elastic contact problem. Numer. Math. 88, 641–659 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00005453
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00005453