Dissipative and non-dissipative evolutionary quasi-variational inequalities with gradient constraints

Evolutionary quasi-variational inequality (QVI) problems of dissipative and non-dissipative nature with pointwise constraints on the gradient are studied. A semi-discretization in time is employed for the study of the problems and the derivation of a numerical solution scheme, respectively. Convergence of the discretization procedure is proven and properties of the original infinite dimensional problem, such as existence, extra regularity and non-decrease in time, are derived. The proposed numerical solver reduces to a finite number of gradient-constrained convex optimization problems which can be solved rather efficiently. The paper ends with a report on numerical tests obtained by a variable splitting algorithm involving different nonlinearities and types of constraints