On quasilinear elliptic hemivariational inequalities of higher order (Q1586325)

The theory of elliptic variational inequalities is closely connected with the convexity of the involved energy functional. The existence theory of variational inequalities is usually based on monotonicity arguments. Let us denote by \(\Omega \in \mathbb R ^{n}\) an open bounded subset, \(1<p<\infty\) and \(m\) any integer. Let \(A\) be a mapping from \(W_{0}^{m,p}\) to its dual space \(W_{0}^{-m,p}\) which is defined by \[ <A(u),v>= \sum_{|\alpha|\leq m} \int_{\Omega} A_{\alpha}(x,u,\dots,D^{m}u)D^{\alpha}v dx, \quad u,v \in W_{0}^{m,p}. \] Here the functions \( A_{\alpha}(x,\eta,\xi)\) satisfy suitable regularity and growth assumptions. The paper investigates the existence of solutions of the quasilinear elliptic hemivariational inequalities of higher order of the problem \[ <A(u),v-u> + \int_{\Omega}j^{0}(u,v-u)dx \geq <g,v-u>,\quad \forall v \in W_{0}^{m,p}, \] where \(j^{0}(u,s)\) stands for the Clarke's directional differential.