Abstract: | We study the regularizing effect of perimeter penalties for a problem of optimal compliance in two dimensions. In particular, we consider minimizers of where The sets , , and the force f are given. We show that if we consider only scalar valued u and constant , or if we consider the elastic energy , then is away from where is pinned. In the scalar case, we also show that, for any of class , is . The proofs rely on a notion of weak outward curvature of , which we can bound without considering properties of the minimizing fields, together with a bootstrap argument.Received: 5 March 2002, Accepted: 3 September 2002, Published online: 17 December 2002 |