Equilibrium of nonlinear Mindlin-Naghdi-Reissner plate problems under unilateral large transformation contact constraints

The equilibrium of nonlinear Mindlin-Naghdi-Reissner plate problems under unilateral contact constraints is analyzed and an existence result is proved under optimal hypotheses. A penalty method is used to define approximate problems for which an existence result is also established. While for general cases, only a classical weak convergence result of a subsequence of solutions of the approximate problems to a solution of the exact one is obtained, the strong convergence is proved for a class of convex large displacement contact problems.