DOMAIN DECOMPOSITION FOR A NONSMOOTH CONVEX MINIMIZATION PROBLEM AND ITS APPLICATION TO PLASTICITY

Lions's work on the Schwarz alternating method for convex minimization problems is generalized to a certain non-smooth situation where the n on-differentiable part of the functionals is additive and independent with respect to the decomposition. Such functionals arise naturally in plasticity where the material law is a variational inequality formula ted in L-2 (Omega). The application to plasticity with hardening is sk etched and gives contraction numbers which are independent of the disc retization parameter h and of a possible regularization of the non-smo oth material law. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.