A nonoverlapping domain decomposition method for variational inequalities derived from free boundary problems

The article proposes a nonoverlapping domain decomposition method for variational inequalities derived from free boundary problems. The free boundary value problem is broken up into two problems on nonoverlapping regions. In one region the problem is treated as a partial differential equation, while in the second region that contains the free boundary part, a variational inequality is considered. By solving these two related problems successively, we have shown that the successive solutions converge to the solution of the original problem. Application to a free surface seepage problem is given. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.