Quasistatic Viscoelastic Contact with Normal Compliance and Friction

Abstract

We prove the existence of a unique weak solution to the quasistatic problem of frictional contact between a deformable body and a rigid foundation. The material is assumed to have nonlinear viscoelastic behavior. The contact is modeled with normal compliance and the associated version of Coulomb's law of dry friction. We establish the continuous dependence of the solution on the normal compliance function. Moreover, we prove the existence of a unique solution to the problem of sliding contact with wear.