BV solutions and viscosity approximations of rate-independent systems^∗

¹ Weierstraß-Institut, Mohrenstraße 39, 10117 Berlin, Germany
mielke@wias-berlin.de
² Institut für Mathematik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 25, 12489 Berlin, Germany
³ Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Brescia, via Valotti 9, 25133 Brescia, Italy
riccarda.rossi@ing.unibs.it
⁴ Dipartimento di Matematica “F. Casorati”, Università di Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy
giuseppe.savare@unipv.it

Received: 14 October 2009
Revised: 11 August 2010

Abstract

In the nonconvex case, solutions of rate-independent systems may develop jumps as a function of time. To model such jumps, we adopt the philosophy that rate-independence should be considered as limit of systems with smaller and smaller viscosity. For the finite-dimensional case we study the vanishing-viscosity limit of doubly nonlinear equations given in terms of a differentiable energy functional and a dissipation potential that is a viscous regularization of a given rate-independent dissipation potential. The resulting definition of “BV solutions” involves, in a nontrivial way, both the rate-independent and the viscous dissipation potential, which play crucial roles in the description of the associated jump trajectories. We shall prove general convergence results for the time-continuous and for the time-discretized viscous approximations and establish various properties of the limiting BV solutions. In particular, we shall provide a careful description of the jumps and compare the new notion of solutions with the related concepts of energetic and local solutions to rate-independent systems.