A CLASS OF VARIATIONAL-HEMIVARIATIONAL INEQUALITIES WITH APPLICATIONS TO FRICTIONAL CONTACT PROBLEMS

A class of variational-hemivariational inequalities is studied in this paper. An inequality in the class involves two nonlinear operators and two nondifferentiable functionals, of which at least one is convex. An existence and uniqueness result is proved for a solution of the inequality. Continuous dependence of the solution on the data is shown. Convergence is established rigorously for finite element solutions of the inequality. An error estimate is derived which is of optimal order for the linear finite element method under appropriate solution regularity assumptions. Finally, the results are applied to a variational-hemivariational inequality arising in the study of some frictional contact problems.