We show that the set of nonnegative equilibrium-like states, namely, like $(y_d,0)$ of the semilinear vibrating string that can be reached from any non-zero initial state $(y_0,y_1)\in H_0^1(0,1)\times L^2(0,1)$, by varying its axial load and the gain of damping, is dense in the “nonnegative” part of the subspace $L^2(0,1)\times \left\{0\right\}$ of $L^2(0,1)\times H^{-1}(0,1)$. Our main results deal with nonlinear terms which admit at most the linear growth at infinity in $y$ and satisfy certain restriction on their total impact on (0,∞) with respect to the time-variable.

This paper is concerned with the unilateral contact problem in linear elasticity. We define two a posteriori error estimators of residual type to evaluate the accuracy of the mixed finite element approximation of the contact problem. Upper and lower bounds of the discretization error are proved for both estimators and several computations are performed to illustrate the theoretical results.