Variational and Non-variational Methods in Nonlinear Analysis and Boundary Value Problems

This book reflects a significant part of authors' research activity dur ing the last ten years. The present monograph is constructed on the results obtained by the authors through their direct cooperation or due to the authors separately or in cooperation with other mathematicians. All these results fit in a unitary scheme giving the structure of this work. The book is mainly addressed to researchers and scholars in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Mechanics, Physics and Engineering. We are greatly indebted to Viorica Venera Motreanu for the careful reading of the manuscript and helpful comments on important issues. We are also grateful to our Editors of Kluwer Academic Publishers for their professional assistance. Our deepest thanks go to our numerous scientific collaborators and friends, whose work was so important for us. D. Motreanu and V. Radulescu IX Introduction The present monograph is based on original results obtained by the authors in the last decade. This book provides a comprehensive expo sition of some modern topics in nonlinear analysis with applications to the study of several classes of boundary value problems. Our framework includes multivalued elliptic problems with discontinuities, variational inequalities, hemivariational inequalities and evolution problems. The treatment relies on variational methods, monotonicity principles, topo logical arguments and optimization techniques. Excepting Sections 1 and 3 in Chapter 1 and Sections 1 and 3 in Chapter 2, the material is new in comparison with any other book, representing research topics where the authors contributed. The outline of our work is the following.