Coupling of Finite and Boundary Elements for Singularly Nonlinear Transmission and Contact Problems

Abstract

This article discusses the well-posedness and error analysis of the coupling of finite and boundary elements for interface problems in nonlinear elasticity. It concerns p-Laplacian-type Hencky materials with an unbounded stress-strain relation, as they arise in the modelling of ice sheets, non-Newtonian fluids or porous media. We propose a functional analytic framework for the numerical analysis and obtain a priori and a posteriori error estimates for Galerkin approximations to the resulting boundary/domain variational inequality.