Floating drops and functions of bounded variation (Q537673)

The authors consider an equilibrium problem for floating drops. The associated energy functional is considered on the class of functions of bounded variations. The main result of the paper is that for given volume of the drop there exists a radially symmetric configuration which is a minimizer of the associated energy functional with respect to compact and symmetric perturbations. Moreover, the paper contains an interesting limiting procedure which approaches the problem that involved volumes have infinite volume.