On the relationship between alternative variational formulations of a frictional contact model

Abstract

We consider a frictional contact model, mathematically described by means of a nonlinear boundary value problem in terms of PDE. We draw the attention to three possible variational formulations of it. One of the variational formulations is a variational inequality of the second kind and the other two are mixed variational formulations with Lagrange multipliers in dual spaces. As main novelty, we establish the relationship between these three variational formulations. We also pay attention to the recovery of the formulation in terms of PDE starting from the mixed variational formulations.