The Lewy-Stampacchia inequality for bilateral problems (Q996950)

The authors consider nonlinear elliptic variational inequalities with two obstacles and prove that every solution satisfies the Lewy-Stampacchia inequality. The operators involved are a fairly general Leray-Lions operators of second order. The Lewy-Stampacchia inequality is established independently for each of the two obstacles. The main novelty is that the Lewy-Stampacchia inequality is proved for every solution of the variational inequality under hypotheses where uniqueness of the solution does not hold true. The idea is to use a ``variant'' of the bilateral problem for which the uniqueness of the solution holds true. The natural penalization method is used. This paper is a continuation of two previous articles by the same authors [Potential Anal. 9, No. 2, 105--142 (1998; Zbl 0918.35058) and Atti Semin. Mat. Fis. Univ. Modena 46, Suppl., 315--334 (1998; Zbl 0919.47056)].