Existence and Approximability Results for variational problems under uniform constraints on the gradient by power penalty

Abstract

Variational problems under uniform quasiconvex constraints on the gradient are studied. In particular, existence of solutions to such problems is proved as well as existence of lagrange multipliers associated to the uniform constraint. They are shown to satisfy an Euler-Lagrange equation and a complementarity property. Our technique consists in approximating the original problem by a one-parameter family of smooth unconstrained optimization problems. Numerical experiments confirm the ability of our method to accurately compute solutions and Lagrange multipliers.