The \(N\)-membranes problem for quasilinear degenerate systems (Q2568558)

The authors study the \(N\)-membranes problem for quasilinear systems (existence and uniqueness of solution follow from the general theory of variational inequalities for strictly monotone operators). The authors approximate the solution by a monotone perturbation (bounded penalization) and show Lewy-Stampacchia type inequalities and (under the strong monotonicity assumption) they establish an error estimate. The authors derive from the Lewy-Stampacchia type inequalities regularity results (in the Hölder spaces) for the solution of the \(N\)-membranes problem. Finally the authors study the stability of the coincidence sets in terms of the convergence of their characteristic functions and prove the convergence of the solutions and, under the strong monotonicity assumption, the continuous dependence on the data (in the Sobolev spaces \(W^{1,\rho}_0\)); the convergence of the characteristic functions of the coincidence sets is established under a ``natural'' assumption on the limit forces; the estimate (in the \(L^1\) norm) of the characteristic functions of the coincidence sets remains an open question.