The coupling of boundary element and finite element methods for a nonlinear exterior boundary value problem (Q912584)

This paper is concerned with an application of the coupling of the boundary element and the finite element methods for the exterior Dirichlet problem in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) for a class of nonlinear second order elliptic equations in divergence form. Emphasis is placed upon the variational formulation and the mathematical foundations of the coupling procedure. With the aid of Green's theorem the boundary value problem is converted to a boundary value problem containing a nonlocal boundary condition which relates the unknown function and its normal derivative on the boundary. A weak formulation for this problem is given and then reduced to an equivalent operator equation. Existence and uniqueness of the solution of this equation is established by the theory of monotone operators. Finally a Galerkin procedure is presented for the operator equation and an error estimate of Cea's type is given.