A survey on obstacle-type problems for fourth order elliptic operators

Abstract

In this article we give a brief overview of some known results in the theory of obstacle-type problems associated with a class of fourth-order elliptic operators, and we highlight our recent work with collaborators in this direction. Obstacle-type problems governed by operators of fourth order naturally arise in the linearized Kirchhoff-Love theory for plate bending phenomena. Moreover, as first observed by Yang in [34], boundary obstacle-type problems associated with the weighted bi-Laplace operator can be seen as extension problems, in the spirit of the one introduced by Caffarelli-Silvestre, for the fractional Laplacian (−∆) s in the case 1 < s < 2. In our recent work, we investigate some problems of this type, where we are concerned with the well-posedness of the problem, the regularity of solutions, and the structure of the free boundary. In our approach, we combine classical techniques from potential theory and the calculus of variations with more modern methods, such as the localization of the operator and monotonicity formulas.