Cubic splines collocation methods for unilateral problems (Q579046)

Variational inequalities theory not only provides us a general unified frame work for study many unrelated moving and free boundary value problems, but also gives more efficient numerical methods for solving them. In this paper, we describe numerical experience on the use of variational inequalities and cubic splines collocation technique to obtain approximate solution to a class of unilateral boundary value problems of elasticity, like those describing the equilibrium configuration of an elastic string stretched over an elastic obstacle. The variational inequality formulation is used to discuss the problem of uniqueness and existence of the solution of the unilateral problems.