A C 0 interior penalty method for a fourth‐order variational inequality of the second kind

In this article, we propose a C 0 interior penalty ( C 0 I P ) method for the frictional plate contact problem and derive both a priori and a posteriori error estimates. We derive an abstract error estimate in the energy norm without additional regularity assumption on the exact solution. The a priori error estimate is of optimal order whenever the solution is regular. Further, we derive a reliable and efficient a posteriori error estimator. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 36–59, 2016