Shape optimization of materially non-linear bodies in contact (Q1265619)

A plane strain problem for a body with nonlinear stress-strain relations (so-called deformation theory of plasticity) is considered. The body is partially fixed and a part of the boundary has a unilateral frictionless contact with a rigid half-plane. The main aim of computations is to find an optimal shape of this part which minimizes an objective functional over a set of admissible curves. The authors approximate the problem by means of a finite element method and show that the solutions of approximate problems converge to a solution of the continuous one on subsequences. Some computational aspects are discussed and numerical experiments are included.