Maximum principles for functionals associated with the solution of semilinear elliptic boundary value problems

We consider a new P-function associated with the solutionu of an elliptic boundary value problem and obtain pointwise bounds for the gradient in terms of the maximum ofu and the geometry of the domain. SimilarP-functions have previously been used to obtain bounds of the same type. Our results give improved bounds for certain problems, in particular we obtain isoperimetric inequalities for the maximum stress in the Saint-Venant torsion problem.