Variational and Numerical Analysis of a Static Thermo-Electro-Elastic Problem with Friction

Abstract

We consider a mathematical model which describes a static frictional contact between a piezoelectric body and a thermally conductive obstacle. The constitutive law is supposed to be thermo-electro-elastic and the contact is modeled with normal compliance and a version of Coulomb’s friction law. We derive a variational formulation of the problem and we prove the existence and uniqueness of its solution. The proof is based on some results of elliptic variational inequalities and fixed point arguments. Furthermore, a finite element approximation and a priori error estimates are obtained.