Electronic Journal of Differential Equations,
Vol. 2007(2007), No. 170, pp. 1-16.

Title: A frictional contact problem for an electro-viscoelastic body

Authors: Zhor Lerguet (Univ. Farhat Abbas de Setif, Algerie)
         Meir Shillor (Oakland Univ., Rochester, MI, USA)
	 Mircea Sofonea (Univ. de  Perpignan, France)

Abstract: 
 A mathematical model which describes the quasistatic frictional
 contact between a piezoelectric body and a deformable conductive
 foundation is studied. A nonlinear electro-viscoelastic
 constitutive law is used to model the piezoelectric material.
 Contact is described with the normal compliance condition, a
 version of Coulomb's law of dry friction, and a regularized
 electrical conductivity condition. A variational formulation of
 the model, in the form of  a coupled system for the displacements
 and the electric potential,  is derived. The existence of
 a unique weak solution of the model is established
 under a smallness assumption on the surface conductance. The proof is
 based on arguments of evolutionary variational inequalities and
 fixed points of operators.
  
Submitted February 12, 2007. Published December 04, 2007.
Math Subject Classifications: 74M10, 74M15, 74F15, 49J40.
Key Words: Piezoelectric; frictional contact; normal compliance; 
           fixed point; variational inequality.