A Convergence Criterion for Elliptic Variational Inequalities

Abstract: We consider an elliptic variational inequality with unilateral constraints in a Hilbert space $X$ which, under appropriate assumptions on the data, has a unique solution $u$. We formulate a convergence criterion to the solution $u$, i.e., we provide necessary and sufficient conditions on a sequence ${u_n}\subset X$ which guarantee the convergence $u_n\to u$ in the space $X$. Then, we illustrate the use of this criterion to recover well-known convergence results and well-posedness results in the sense of Tykhonov and Levitin-Polyak. We also provide two applications of our results, in the study of a heat transfer problem and an elastic frictionless contact problem, respectively.