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    Variational convergence of gradient flows and rate-independent evolutions in metric spaces
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2012) Mielke, Alexander; Rossi, Riccarda; Savaré, Giuseppe
    We study the asymptotic behaviour of families of gradient flows in a general metric setting, when the metric-dissipation potentials degenerate in the limit to a dissipation with linear growth. We present a general variational definition of BV solutions to metric evolutions, showing the different characterization of the solution in the absolutely continuous regime, on the singular Cantor part, and along the jump transitions. By using tools of metric analysis, BV functions and blow-up by time rescaling, we show that this variational notion is stable with respect to a wide class of perturbations involving energies, distances, and dissipation potentials. As a particular application, we show that BV solutions to rate-independent problems arise naturally as a limit of p-gradient flows, p>1, when the exponents p converge to 1.
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    BV solutions and viscosity approximations of rate-independent systems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2009) Mielke, Alexander; Rossi, Riccarda; Savaré, Giuseppe
    In the nonconvex case solutions of rate-independent systems may develop jumps as a function of time. To model such jumps, we adopt the philosophy that rate independence should be considered as limit of systems with smaller and smaller viscosity. For the finite-dimensional case we study the vanishing-viscosity limit of doubly nonlinear equations given in terms of a differentiable energy functional and a dissipation potential which is a viscous regularization of a given rate-independent dissipation potential. The resulting definition of `BV solutions' involves, in a nontrivial way, both the rate-independent and the viscous dissipation potential, which play a crucial role in the description of the associated jump trajectories. We shall prove a general convergence result for the time-continuous and for the time-discretized viscous approximations and establish various properties of the limiting $BV$ solutions. In particular, we shall provide a careful description of the jumps and compare the new notion of solutions with the related concepts of energetic and local solutions to rate-independent systems.