On the finite element approximation of a semicoercive Stokes variational inequality arising in glaciology

Stokes variational inequalities arise in the formulation of glaciological problems involving contact. We consider the problem of a marine ice sheet with a grounding line, although the analysis presented here is extendable in a straightforward manner to other contact problems in glaciology, such as that of subglacial cavitation. The analysis of this problem and its discretisation is complicated by the nonlinear rheology commonly used for modelling ice, the enforcement of a friction boundary condition given by a power law, and the presence of rigid modes in the velocity space, which render the variational inequality semicoercive. In this work, we consider a mixed formulation of this variational inequality involving a Lagrange multiplier and provide an analysis of its finite element approximation. Error estimates in the presence of rigid modes are obtained by means of a specially-built projection operator onto the subspace of rigid modes and a Korn-type inequality. Numerical results are reported to validate the error estimates.