Approximation of minimal surfaces with free boundaries: convergence results

In a previous paper we developed a penalty method to approximate solutions of the free boundary problem for minimal surfaces by solutions of certain variational problems depending on a parameter $\lambda $. There we showed existence and $C^2$-regularity of these solutions as well as convergence to the solution of the free boundary problem for $\lambda \to \infty $. In this paper we develop a fully discrete finite element procedure for approximating solutions of these variational problems and prove a convergence estimate, which includes an order of convergence with respect to the grid size.