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

Abstract

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.