Stable approximations of a minimal surface problem with variational inequalities (Q1809793)

Summary: We develop a new approach for the stable approximation of a minimal surface problem associated with a relaxed Dirichlet problem in the space \(\text{BV} (\Omega)\) of functions of bounded variation. The problem can be reformulated as an unconstrained minimization problem of a functional \({\mathcal I}\) on \(\text{BV} (\Omega)\) defined by \({\mathcal I}(u)= {\mathcal A}(u)+ \int_{\partial\Omega}|Tu-\varphi|\), where \({\mathcal A}(u)\) is the ``area integral'' of \(u\) with respect to \(\Omega\), \(T\) is the ``trace operator'' from \(\text{BV} (\Omega)\) into \(L^1(\partial\Omega)\), and \(\varphi\) is the prescribed data on the boundary of \(\Omega\). We establish convergence and stability of approximate regularized solutions which are solutions of a family of variational inequalities. We also prove convergence of an iterative method based on Uzawa's algorithm for implementation of our regularization procedure.