Dynamics of elastic bodies connected by a thin soft viscoelastic layer (Q387981)

This paper presents a mathematical analysis of the so-called bonding problem in the case of two massive linear elastic solids connected by a thin soft nonlinear Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic adhesive layer. The adhesive is assumed to be viscoelastic of Kelvin-Voigt generalized type, which makes it possible to deal with a relatively wide range of physical behavior by choosing suitable dissipation potentials. In the static and purely elastic case, convergence results when geometrical and mechanical parameters tend to zero have already been obtained in the literature using variational convergence methods. This paper studies the convergence in the dynamic case. The authors first use the theory of maximal monotone operators to obtain the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the problem. Then, the authors employ a nonlinear version of Trotter's theory of approximation of semigroups acting on variable Hilbert spaces, and prove the convergence results. The limit problem involves a mechanical constraint imposed along the surface to which the layer shrinks. Moreover, the meaning of this limit with respect to the relative behavior of the parameters is discussed.