Analysis and Approximation of Hemivariational Inequality for a Frictional Thermo-electro-visco-elastic Contact Problem with Damage

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate a contact problem involving thermo-electro-visco-elastic body with damage and a rigid foundation. The friction is modelled with a subgradient of a locally Lipschitz mapping, and the contact is described by the Signorini's unilateral contact condition. A parabolic differential inclusion for the damage function is used to include the damaging effect in the model. We establish the model's variational formulation using four systems of three hemivariational inequalities and a parabolic equation, we prove an existence and uniqueness result of this problem. The proof is based on a fixed point argument and a recent finding from hemivariational inequality theory. Finally, by employing the finite element approach, we investigate a fully discrete approximation of the model and we derive error estimates on the approximate solution.