On a solution of a generalized semi-coercive contact problem in thermo-elasticity (Q1614051)

The authors consider several thermoelastic bodies in \({\mathbb R}^{N}\), \(N=2,3\), which are in mutual contact. These bodies fill domains of \({\mathbb R}^{N}\) which are Lipschitz continuous, they are supposed to be loaded on one part of their boundary, and they are held clamped on some other parts of their boundary. The contact between the bodies, which occurs on a third part of the boundaries, is modeled by Signorini's condition and by Coulomb's law of dry friction. On a fourth part of the boundaries which can be empty, the authors introduce a boundary condition which couples the normal stresses and heat fluxes. Thus the authors consider a quasi-coupled and semi-coercive elliptic problem. The authors then introduce the corresponding variational formulation relying on variational inequalities, and prove the existence of a weak solution. Under additional assumptions the uniqueness of this weak solution can be proved. The final part of the paper deals with numerical approximation of the problem based on finite element method. Error estimates are obtained for this numerical scheme.