Optimal control of quasistatic plasticity with linear kinematic hardening, part III: Optimality conditions. in preparation

Abstract. In this paper we consider an optimal control problem governed by a time-dependent variational inequality arising in quasistatic plasticity with linear kinematic hardening. We address certain continuity properties of the forward operator, which imply the existence of an optimal control. Moreover, a discretization in time is derived and we show that every local minimizer of the continuous problem can be approximated by minimizers of modified, time-discrete problems.