A new class of fractional differential hemivariational inequalities with application to an incompressible Navier-Stokes system coupled with a fractional diffusion equation

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of a new and complicated dynamical system, called a fractional differential hemivariational inequality, which consists of a quasilinear evolution equation involving the fractional Caputo derivative operator and a coupled generalized parabolic hemivariational inequality. Under certain general assumptions, existence and regularity of a mild solution to the dynamical system are established by employing a surjectivity result for weakly-weakly upper semicontinuous multivalued mappings, and a feedback iterative technique together with a temporally semi-discrete approach through the backward Euler difference scheme with quasi-uniform time-steps. To illustrate the applicability of the abstract results, we consider a nonstationary and incompressible Navier-Stokes system supplemented by a fractional reaction-diffusion equation, which is studied as a fractional hemivariational inequality.