An \(L^ 2\)-error estimate for an approximation of the solution of a parabolic variational inequality (Q911234)

We estimate the order of the difference between the numerical approximation and the solution of a parabolic variational inequality. The numerical approximation is obtained using a finite element discretization in space and a finite difference discretization in time which is more general than is used in the literature. We obtain better error estimates than those given in the literature. The error estimates are compared with numerical experiments.