State-Dependent Implicit Sweeping Process in the Framework of Quasistatic Evolution Quasi-Variational Inequalities

Abstract

This paper deals with the existence and uniqueness of solutions for a class of state-dependent sweeping processes with constrained velocity in Hilbert spaces without using any compactness assumption, which is known to be an open problem. To overcome the difficulty, we introduce a new notion called hypomonotonicity-like of the normal cone to the moving set, which is satisfied by many important cases. Combining this latter notion with an adapted Moreau’s catching-up algorithm and a Cauchy technique, we obtain the strong convergence of approximate solutions to the unique solution, which is a fundamental property. Using standard tools from convex analysis, we show the equivalence between this implicit state-dependent sweeping processes and quasistatic evolution quasi-variational inequalities. As an application, we study the state-dependent quasistatic frictional contact problem involving viscoelastic materials with short memory in contact mechanics.