We analyze a rate-independent model for damage evolution in elastic bodies. The central quantities are a stored energy functional and a dissipation functional, which is assumed to be positively homogeneous of degree one. Since the energy is not simultaneously (strictly) convex in the damage variable and the displacements, solutions may have jumps as a function of time. The latter circumstance makes it necessary to recur to suitable notions of weak solution. However, the by-now classical concept of global energetic solution fails to describe accurately the behavior of the system at jumps.
Hence, we consider rate-independent damage models as limits of systems driven by viscous, rate-dependent dissipation. We use a technique for taking the vanishing viscosity limit, which is based on arc-length reparameterization. In this way, in the limit we obtain a novel formulation for the rate-independent damage model, which highlights the interplay of viscous and rate-independent effects in the jump regime, and provides a better description of the energetic behavior of the system at jumps.
This paper focuses on
rate-independent damage in elastic bodies. Since the driving energy is nonconvex,
solutions may have jumps as a function of time, and in this situation it is known that the classical concept
of energetic solutions for rate-independent systems
may fail to accurately describe the
behavior of the system at jumps.
Therefore, we resort to the (by now well-established) vanishing viscosity approach to rate-independent modeling
and approximate the model by its viscous regularization.
In fact, the analysis of the latter PDE system presents
remarkable difficulties, due to its highly nonlinear character.
We tackle it by combining a variational approach to a class of abstract doubly nonlinear evolution equations, with
careful regularity estimates tailored to this specific system relying on a q-Laplacian type gradient regularization of the damage variable.
Hence, for the viscous problem we conclude the existence of weak solutions satisfying a
suitable energy-dissipation inequality that is the starting point for the vanishing viscosity analysis.
The latter leads to the notion of (weak) parameterized
solution to our rate-independent system,
which encompasses the influence of viscosity in the description of the jump regime.