Boundary optimal control for quasistatic bilateral frictional contact problems (Q2637663)

This important paper analyzes a boundary optimal control of a quasistatic bilateral frictional contact problem. The elastic body, which, under influence of volume forces and surface tractions, is in bilateral contact with a rigid foundation, is considered. The friction is described by a nonlocal version of Coulomb's law. It is assumed that the forces and tractions vary slowly with time and the accelerations in the system are negligible. Next the authors assume that there is no loss of contact between the body and the foundation. The mathematical formulation of this problem is a state-control boundary optimal control problem where, in addition, the state is the solution of an implicit quasivariational inequality for which the authors do not have uniqueness results. Due to these difficulties, for obtaining the existence of at least one optimal solution, the authors were forced to consider a family of penalized optimal control problems. The existence of a solution for the optimal control problem is proved by using a penalization technique. Since the authors want to find the surface traction \(g\) acting on \(\Gamma_1\) which leads to a desired displacement field \(u_d\) on the part \(\Gamma_2\) of the boundary which is in bilateral contact with a rigid foundation, they introduce control and, respectively, observation spaces.