%0 Journal Article
%T A frictionless contact problem for viscoelastic materials
%A Mik el Barboteu
%A Weimin Han
%A Mircea Sofonea
%J Journal of Applied Mathematics
%D 2002
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/s1110757x02000219
%X We consider a mathematical model which describes the contact between a deformable body and an obstacle, the so-called foundation. The body is assumed to have a viscoelastic behavior that we model with the Kelvin-Voigt constitutive law. The contact is frictionless and is modeled with the well-known Signorini condition in a form with a zero gap function. We present two alternative yet equivalent weak formulations of the problem and establish existence and uniqueness results for both formulations. The proofs are based on a general result on evolution equations with maximal monotone operators. We then study a semi-discrete numerical scheme for the problem, in terms of displacements. The numerical scheme has a unique solution. We show the convergence of the scheme under the basic solution regularity. Under appropriate regularity assumptions on the solution, we also provide optimal order error estimates.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jam/2002/350590/abs/