We consider the boundary-value problem -aiJ (x;u;Du) DiDju=a(x;u;Du) in a,where f/is a bounded domain in fit n with sufficiently smooth boundary Of/; Di is a differential operator with respect to zi,~i is a tangentiM differential operator on Of/, i.e.,
6i = Di -ninjDj,(n(x)= (ni(x)) is the unit vector of the outward normal to 0a at the point x); 6u : (~iu) is the projection of Du on the hyperplane tangent to Of/. Note that (2) is not an autonomous equation on 0f/, since along with tangential derivatives it includes the normM component of Du.Problem (1)- (2) was originally set up (in the linear case) by Ventzel [1] and was studied by Luo and Trudinger [2][3][4][5].The general linear Hk-theory for elliptic systems of equations conjuncted on manifolds of different dimensions is presented in [6] (the Ventzel problem is a special case of such systems).We assume that Eq. (1) is uniformly elliptic, i.e.,(A0) ul~l 2 < a ij (x; z; p)~i~j <__ u-11~l 2 V ~ e 9~ n, u = const > 0, and the following natural structure conditions are satisfied: