Study of a viscoelastic frictional contact problem with adhesion

summary:We consider a quasistatic frictional contact problem between a viscoelastic body with long memory and a deformable foundation. The contact is modelled with normal compliance in such a way that the penetration is limited and restricted to unilateral constraint. The adhesion between contact surfaces is taken into account and the evolution of the bonding field is described by a first order differential equation. We derive a variational formulation and prove the existence and uniqueness result of the weak solution under a certain condition on the coefficient of friction. The proof is based on time-dependent variational inequalities, differential equations and Banach fixed point theorem