Rate-independent damage in thermo-viscoelastic materials with inertia (Q1994015)

The authors study a model for rate-independent, unidirectional, partial damage in visco-elastic materials with inertia and thermal effects. This reduces to a system of partial differential equations composed of the (damped) equation of elastodynamics, a rate-independent flow rule for the damage variable, and the heat equation, coupled in a highly nonlinear way. The energetic formulation of the initial-boundary value problem associated with this system is provided. An existence result is obtained by means of time-discretization and variational convergence methods. Moreover, the authors study the limiting behaviour of the system in the slow loading regime, for vanishing viscosity and inertia.