This document may be downloaded, read, stored and printed for your own use within the limits of § 53 UrhG but it may not be distributed via the internet or passed on to external parties.Dieses Dokument darf im Rahmen von § 53 UrhG zum eigenen Gebrauch kostenfrei heruntergeladen, gelesen, gespeichert und ausgedruckt, aber nicht im Internet bereitgestellt oder an Außenstehende weitergegeben werden.Rocca, ElisabettaRossi, Riccarda2016-03-242019-06-2820142198-5855https://doi.org/10.34657/2311https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/2976In this paper we analyze a PDE system modelling (non-isothermal) phase transitions and damage phenomena in thermoviscoelastic materials. The model is thermodynamically consistent: in particular, no small perturbation assumption is adopted, which results in the presence of quadratic terms on the right-hand side of the temperature equation, only estimated in L1. The whole system has a highly nonlinear character. We address the existence of a weak notion of solution, referred to as entropic, where the temperature equation is formulated with the aid of an entropy inequality, and of a total energy inequality. This solvability concept reflects the basic principles of thermomechanics as well as the thermodynamical consistency of the model. It allows us to obtain global-in-time existence theorems without imposing any restriction on the size of the initial data. We prove our results by passing to the limit in a time discretization scheme, carefully tailored to the nonlinear features of the PDE system (with its entropic formulation), and of the a priori estimates performed on it. Our time-discrete analysis could be useful towards the numerical study of this model.application/pdfeng510Damagephase transitionsthermoviscoelasticityglobal-in-time weak solutionstime discretizationReport