A contact problem for viscoelastic bodies with inertial effects and unilateral boundary constraints

Abstract

We consider a three-dimensional viscoelastic body subjected to external forces. Inertial effects are considered; hence the equation for the displacement field is of hyperbolic type. The equation is complemented with Dirichlet and Neuman conditions on a part the boundary, while on another part the body is in adhesive contact with a solid support. The boundary forces acting on the latter part due to the action of elastic stresses are responsible for delamination, i.e., progressive failure of adhesive bonds. This phenomenon is mathematically represented by a nonlinear ODE which describes the evolution of the delamination order parameter z. Following the lines of a new approach introduced by the authors in a preceding paper and based on duality methods in Sobolev-Bochner spaces, we define a suitable concept of weak solutions to the resulting PDE system. Correspondingly, we prove an existence result on finite time intervals of arbitrary length.