A Theory of Discretization for Nonlinear Evolution Inequalities Applied to Parabolic Signorini Problems

We present a discretization theory for a class of nonlinear evolution inequalities that encompasses time dependent monotone operator equations and parabolic variational inequalities. This discretization theory combines a backward Euler scheme for time discretization and the Galerkin method for space discretization. We include set convergence of convex subsets in the sense of Glowinski-Mosco-Stummel to allow a nonconforming approximation of unilateral constraints. As an application we treat parabolic Signorini problems involving the p-Laplacian, where we use standard piecewise polynomial finite elements for space discretization. Without imposing any regularity assumption for the solution we establish various norm convergence results for piecewise linear as well piecewise quadratic trial functions, which in the latter case leads to a nonconforming approximation scheme.