Contact phenomena arise in a variety of industrial process and engineering applications. For this reason, contact mechanics has attracted substantial attention from research communities. Mathematical problems from contact mechanics have been studied extensively for over half a century. Effort was initially focused on variational inequality formulations, and in the past ten years considerable effort has been devoted to contact problems in the form of hemivariational inequalities. This article surveys recent development in studies of hemivariational inequalities arising in contact mechanics. We focus on contact problems with elastic and viscoelastic materials, in the framework of linearized strain theory, with a particular emphasis on their numerical analysis. We begin by introducing three representative mathematical models which describe the contact between a deformable body in contact with a foundation, in static, history-dependent and dynamic cases. In weak formulations, the models we consider lead to various forms of hemivariational inequalities in which the unknown is either the displacement or the velocity field. Based on these examples, we introduce and study three abstract hemivariational inequalities for which we present existence and uniqueness results, together with convergence analysis and error estimates for numerical solutions. The results on the abstract hemivariational inequalities are general and can be applied to the study of a variety of problems in contact mechanics; in particular, they are applied to the three representative mathematical models. We present numerical simulation results giving numerical evidence on the theoretically predicted optimal convergence order; we also provide mechanical interpretations of simulation results.

We consider a class of history-dependent quasivariational inequalities for which we prove the continuous dependence of the solution with respect to the set of constraints. Then, under additional assumptions, we associate with each inequality in the class a new inequality, the so-called dual variational inequality, for which we state and prove existence, uniqueness, equivalence and convergence results. The proofs are based on various estimates, monotonicity and fixed-point arguments for history-dependent operators. Our abstract results are useful in the study of various mathematical models of contact. To provide an example, we consider a boundary value problem which describes the equilibrium of a viscoelastic body in contact with an elastic-rigid foundation. We list the assumptions on the data and derive both the primal and the dual variational formulation of the problem. Then, we state and prove existence, uniqueness and convergence results. We also provide the link between the two formulations, together with their mechanical interpretation.

A new class of history-dependent variational–hemivariational inequalities was recently studied in Migórski et al. (2015Nonlinear Anal. Ser. B: Real World Appl.22, 604–618). There, an existence and uniqueness result was proved and used in the study of a mathematical model which describes the contact between a viscoelastic body and an obstacle. The aim of this paper is to continue the analysis of the inequalities introduced in Migórski et al. (2015Nonlinear Anal. Ser. B: Real World Appl.22, 604–618) and to provide their numerical analysis. We start with a continuous dependence result. Then we introduce numerical schemes to solve the inequalities and derive error estimates. We apply the results to a quasistatic frictional contact problem in which the material is modelled with a viscoelastic constitutive law, the contact is given in the form of normal compliance, and friction is described with a total slip-dependent version of Coulomb's law.

We consider a mathematical model which describes the frictionless contact between a piezoelectric body and a foundation. The contact process is quasi-static and the foundation is assumed to be insulated. The novelty of the model consists in the fact that the material behaviour is described with an electro-elastic–visco-plastic constitutive law and the contact is modelled with a subdifferential boundary condition. We derive a variational formulation of the problem which is in the form of a system coupling two nonlinear integral equations with a history-dependent hemivariational inequality and a time-dependent linear equation. We prove the existence of a weak solution to the problem and, under additional assumptions, its uniqueness. The proof is based on a recent result on history-dependent hemivariational inequalities obtained by Migórski, Ochal and Sofonea in 2011.

A new class of history-dependent quasivariational inequalities was recently studied in [M. Sofonea and A. Matei, History-dependent quasivariational inequalities arising in contact mechanics. Eur. J. Appl. Math. 22 (2011) 471–491]. Existence, uniqueness and regularity results were proved and used in the study of several mathematical models which describe the contact between a deformable body and an obstacle. The aim of this paper is to provide numerical analysis of the quasivariational inequalities introduced in the aforementioned paper. To this end we introduce temporally semi-discrete and fully discrete schemes for the numerical approximation of the inequalities, show their unique solvability, and derive error estimates. We then apply these results to a quasistatic frictional contact problem in which the material’s behavior is modeled with a viscoelastic constitutive law, the contact is bilateral, and friction is described with a slip-rate version of Coulomb’s law. We discuss implementation of the corresponding fully-discrete scheme and present numerical simulation results on a two-dimensional example.