Double phase obstacle problems with variable exponent (Q2154928)

Let \(\Omega \subseteq \mathbb{R}^N\) (\(N \geq 2\)) be a bounded domain with a Lipschitz boundary \( \partial \Omega\). The authors consider the following problem \[ \begin{cases} - \operatorname{div}(|\nabla u|^{p(x)-2}\nabla u+\mu(x)|\nabla u|^{q(x)-2}\nabla u)+\beta|u|^{\theta(x)-2}u \in f(x,u,\nabla u) \mbox{ in } \Omega,\\ \\ u\big|_{\partial \Omega}=0, \, u\leq \Phi \mbox{ in }\Omega, \end{cases}\] where \(0\leq \mu(\cdot)\in L^\infty(\Omega)\), \(\beta>0\), \(p,q,\theta :\overline{\Omega} \to (1,+\infty)\) are continuous functions, \(f:\Omega \times \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^N\to 2^{\mathbb{R}}\) is a multivalued convection term and \(\Phi:\Omega \to [0,+\infty)\) is a given obstacle function. The functional setting to carry out this study is that of Musielak-Orlicz-Sobolev spaces for variable exponents. Adopting suitable tools of the theory of nonsmooth analysis and an existence theorem for mixed variational inequalities with multivalued pseudomonotone operators, the authors establish the nonemptiness, boundedness and closedness of the solution set to the above problem. Furthermore, the authors develop a convergence analysis involving certain approximated (perturbed) problems, associated to the above problem.