OPTIMAL SHAPE DESIGN FOR SYSTEMS GOVERNED BY VARIATIONAL-INEQUALITIES, .1. EXISTENCE THEORY FOR THE ELLIPTIC CASE

Some general existence results for optimal shape design problems for systems governed by elliptic variational inequalities are established by the mapping method and variational convergence theory. Then, an existence theorem is given for the optimal shape for an electrochemical machining problem, in which the cost functional is not lower semicontinuous, by extending the general results to this case. Furthermore, this problem is approximated by a set of optimal shape design problems which have more smooth cost functionals and are easier to handle computationally.