Variational and numerical analysis of a quasistatic viscoelastic problem with normal compliance,friction and damage

We consider a model for quasistatic frictional contact between a viscoelastic body and a foundation. The material constitutive relation is assumed to be nonlinear. The mechanical damage of the material, caused by excessive stress or strain, is described by the damage function, the evolution of which is determined by a parabolic inclusion. The contact is modeled with the normal compliance condition and the associated version of Coulomb's law of dry friction. We derive a variational formulation for the problem and prove the existence of its unique weak solution. We then study a fully discrete scheme for the numerical solutions of the problem and obtain error estimates on the approximate solutions.     

Quasistatic frictional thermo‐piezoelectric contact problem

We consider here a mathematical model describing the bilateral frictional contact between a thermo‐piezoelectric body and a thermally conductive foundation. We model the behavior of the material with a linear thermo‐electro‐elastic constitutive law. The process is assumed to be quasistatic and the contact is modeled with a nonlocal version of Coulomb's dry friction law, in which the frictional heat generated in the process, is taken into account. We drive a variational formulation of the problem and establish the existence of its weak solution.     

A quasistatic contact problem with slip‐dependent coefficient of friction

We consider a mathematical model which describes the bilateral quasistatic contact of a viscoelastic body with a rigid obstacle. The contact is modelled with a modified version of Coulomb's law of dry friction and, moreover, the coefficient of friction is assumed to depend either on the total slip or on the current slip. In the first case, the problem depends upon contact history. We present the classical formulations of the problems, the variational formulations and establish the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution to each of them, when the coefficient of friction is sufficiently small. The proofs are based on classical results for elliptic variational inequalities and fixed point arguments. We also study the dependence of the solutions on the perturbations of the friction coefficient and obtain a uniform convergence result. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stress formulation for frictionless contact of an elastic-perfectly-plastic body

A mathematical model for frictionless contact of a deformable body with a rigid moving obstacle is analyzed. The Prandtl–Reuss elastic-perfectly-plastic constitutive law is used to describe the material's behavior, and contact is modeled with a unilateral condition imposed on the surface velocity. The problem is motivated by the process of the plowing of the ground. A variational formulation of the problem is derived in terms of the stresses and the existence of the unique weak solution is proven. The proof is based on arguments for differential inclusions obtained in A. Amassad, M. Shillor and M. Sofonea (2001). A quasistatic contact problem for an elastic perfectly plastic body with Tresca's friction. Nonlin. Anal., 35, 95–109. Finally, a study of the continuous dependence of the solution on the data is presented.     

Adhesive contact problem for viscoplastic materials

We examine a mathematical model that describes a quasistatic adhesive contact between a viscoplastic body and deformable foundation. The material’s behaviour is described by the rate-type constitutive law which involves functions with a non-polynomial growth. The contact is modelled by the normal compliance condition with limited penetration and adhesion, a subdifferential friction condition also depending on adhesion, and the evolution of bonding field is governed by an ordinary differential equation. We present the variational formulation of this problem which is a system of an almost history-dependent variational–hemivariational inequality for the displacement field and an ordinary differential equation for the bonding field. The results on existence and uniqueness of solution to an abstract almost history-dependent inclusion and variational–hemivariational inequality in the reflexive Orlicz–Sobolev space are proved and applied to the adhesive contact problem.     

Analysis of a history-dependent frictional contact problem

We consider a mathematical model which describes the quasistatic contact between a viscoelastic body and a foundation. The material’s behaviour is modelled with a constitutive law with long memory. The contact is frictional and is modelled with normal compliance and memory term, associated to the Coulomb’s law of dry friction. We present the classical formulation of the problem, list the assumptions on the data and derive a variational formulation of the model. Then we prove the unique weak solvability of the problem. The proof is based on arguments of history-dependent variational inequalities. We also study the dependence of the weak solution with respect to the data and prove a convergence result.     

Analysis of a quasistatic contact problem for piezoelectric materials

We consider a mathematical model which describes the frictional contact between a piezoelectric body and an electrically conductive foundation. The process is quasistatic, the material behavior is modeled with an electro-viscoelastic constitutive law and the contact is described with subdifferential boundary conditions. We derive the variational formulation of the problem which is in the form of a system involving two history-dependent hemivariational inequalities in which the unknowns are the velocity and electric potential field. Then we prove the existence of a unique weak solution to the model. The proof is based on a recent result on history-dependent hemivariational inequalities obtained in Migórski et al. (submitted for publication) [16].     

Quasistatic Thermoviscoelastic Frictional Contact Problem with Damped Response

We analyze a problem which describes the frictional contact between a thermoviscoelastic body and a rigid foundation. The process is assumed to be quasistatic and the contact is modeled by a general normal damped response condition with friction law and heat exchange. Then we present a variational formulation of the problem, which is set in an abstract form as a system of evolution equations for the displacements and temperature. We establish the existence and uniqueness of the weak solution, using general results on evolution equations with monotone operators and fixed point arguments. Finally, we study the continuous dependence of the solution with respect to the initial data and contact conditions.     

The weak solution of an antiplane contact problem for electro-viscoelastic materials with long-term memory

We study a mathematical model which describes the antiplane shear deformation of a cylinder in frictionless contact with a rigid foundation. The material is assumed to be electro-viscoelastic with long-term memory, and the friction is modeled with Tresca’s law and the foundation is assumed to be electrically conductive. First we derive the classical variational formulation of the model which is given by a system coupling an evolutionary variational equality for the displacement field with a time-dependent variational equation for the potential field. Then we prove the existence of a unique weak solution to the model. Moreover, the proof is based on arguments of evolution equations and on the Banach fixedpoint theorem.     

Numerical analysis of a frictional contact problem for viscoelastic materials with long-term memory

We consider a mathematical model which describes the bilateral contact between a deformable body and an obstacle. The process is quasistatic, the material is assumed to be viscoelastic with long memory and the friction is modeled with Tresca’s law. The problem has a unique weak solution. Here we study spatially semi-discrete and fully discrete schemes using finite differences and finite elements. We show the convergence of the schemes under the basic solution regularity and we derive order error estimates. Finally, we present an algorithm for the numerical realization and simulations for a two-dimensional test problem.     

Existence Results for Quasistatic Contact Problems with Coulomb Friction

We prove the existence of a solution for an elastic frictional, quasistatic, contact problem with a Signorini non-penetration condition and a local Coulomb friction law. The problem is formulated as a time-dependent variational problem and is solved by the aid of an established shifting technique used to obtain increased regularity at the contact surface. The analysis is carried out by the aid of auxiliary problems involving regularized friction terms and a so-called normal compliance penalization technique. \par Accepted 15 May 2000. Online publication 6 October 2000.     

A quasistatic viscoplastic contact problem with normal compliance and friction

We consider a quasistatic contact problem between a viscoplasticbody and an obstacle, the so-called foundation. The contactis modelled with normal compliance and the associated versionof Coulomb's law of dry friction. We derive a variational formulationof the problem and, under a smallness assumption on the normalcompliance functions, we establish the existence of a weak solutionto the model. The proof is carried out in several steps. Itis based on a time-discretization method, arguments of monotonicityand compactness, Banach fixed point theorem and Schauder fixedpoint theorem.     

A frictional contact problem with normal damped response for elastic-visco-plastic materials

We study an evolution problem which describes the dynamic contact of an elastic-visco-plastic body with a foundation. We model the contact with normal damped response and a local friction law. A damage of the material caused by elastic deformation is taken into account, its evolution is described by an inclusion of parabolic type. We derive variational formulation for the model which is in the form of a system involving the displacement field, the stress field and the damage field. We prove the existence and uniqueness result of the weak solution. The proof is based on arguments of evolution equations with monotone operators, a classical existence and uniqueness result on parabolic inequalities and fixed point.     

A variational inequality and applications to quasistatic problems with Coulomb friction

The aim of this paper is to study an evolution variational inequality that generalizes some contact problems with Coulomb friction in small deformation elasticity. Using an incremental procedure, appropriate estimates and convergence properties of the discrete solutions, the existence of a continuous solution is proved. This abstract result is applied to quasistatic contact problems with a local Coulomb friction law for nonlinear Hencky and also for linearly elastic materials.     

Existence of a solution for a quasistatic problem of unilateral contact with local friction

The existence result in linear elasticity obtained for the quasistatic problem of unilateral contact with regularized Coulomb friction is extented to a local friction problem. After discretizing the implicit variational inequality with respect to time, we have to solve a sequence of variational inequalities similar to the one of the static problem. If the friction coefficient is small enough, we show the existence of the incremental solution. We construct a suitable sequence of functions converging towards a quasistatic solution of the problem.     

Weak solvability of antiplane frictional contact problems for elastic cylinders

We study a mathematical model which describes the antiplane shear deformations of a cylinder in frictional contact with a rigid foundation. The process is static, the material behavior is described with a linearly elastic constitutive law and friction is modeled with a general slip dependent subdifferential boundary condition. We derive a variational formulation of the model which is in a form of a hemivariational inequality for the displacement field. Then we prove the existence of a weak solution to the model and, under additional assumptions, its uniqueness. The proofs are based on abstract results for operator inclusions in Banach spaces. Finally, we present concrete examples of friction laws for which our results are valid.     

Solvability of dynamic antiplane frictional contact problems for viscoelastic cylinders

We study a mathematical model which describes the antiplane shear deformations of a cylinder in frictional contact with a rigid foundation. The process is dynamic, the material behavior is described with a linearly viscoelastic constitutive law and friction is modeled with a general subdifferential boundary condition. We derive a variational formulation of the model which is in a form of an evolutionary hemivariational inequality for the displacement field. Then we prove the existence of a weak solution to the model. The proof is based on an abstract result for second order evolutionary inclusions in Banach spaces. Also, we prove that, under additional assumptions, the weak solution to the model is unique. We complete our results with concrete examples of friction laws for which our results are valid.     

On wheel–rail contact problem with material properties varying with depth

Numerous laboratory experiments indicate that the use of a layer or a coating material attached to the conventional steel body reduce the magnitude of contact stress. Therefore in this paper we solve numerically the wheel–rail contact problem with friction and wear assuming the existence of a small elastic layer on the rail surface. Material properties of this layer are changing with its depth. The friction between the bodies is governed by Coulomb law. In contact zone Archard's law of wear is assumed. We take special features of this rolling contact problem and use so-called quasistatic approach to solve this contact problem. Finite element method is used as a discretization method. The numerical results including the distribution of normal stress along the contact boundary are provided and discussed. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A quasistatic viscoplastic contact problem with normal compliance,unilateral constraint,memory term and friction

The goal of this paper is to deal with a mathematical model which describes the quasistatic frictional contact between a viscoplastic body and a foundation. The contact is modeled with normal compliance, unilateral constraint and memory term. We present the classical formulation of the problem together with the list of assumptions on the data. Then we derive the variational–hemivariational formulation of the model and we prove its unique weak solvability. The proof is based on a recent abstract result of a class of history-dependent variational–hemivariational inequalities.