Strain softening in viscoelasticity of the rate type (Q1188456)

The paper is concerned with the study of the system of partial differential equations \(v_ t=\sigma_ x\), \(u_ t=v_ x\), \(\sigma=\tau(u)v_ x^ n\), where \(\tau(u)\) is a prescribed constitutive function and \(n\) is a positive parameter. These equations describe the plastic shearing of an infinite plate. The author establishes existence and uniquenes results for the basic initial-boundary-value problems and studies the regularizing effect. The behavior of solutions is studied under various assumptions for the constitutive law. The special case when \(\tau(u)=1/u^ m\), where \(m\) is a positive parameter, is analysed in detail.