A dynamical method for optimal control of the obstacle problem

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we consider the numerical method for an optimal control problem governed by an obstacle problem. An approximate optimization problem is proposed by regularizing the original non-differentiable constrained problem with a simple method. The connection between the two formulations is established through some convergence results. A sufficient condition is derived to decide whether a solution of the first-order optimality system is a global minimum. The method with a second-order in time dissipative system is developed to solve the optimality system numerically. Several numerical examples are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.