A fractional model for electro-mechanical viscoelastic contact with normal compliance condition

Abstract

This article addresses the analysis of a quasistatic contact problem between an electro-viscoelastic body and a rigid foundation, considering a gap function. The constitutive relation is constructed using a fractional Kelvin-Voigt model, while the contact is described by a version of the normal compliance condition. After establishing the variational formulation of the model, we prove the existence of a weak solution based on monotone operators, the Caputo derivative, the Faedo-Galerkin method, and Banach's fixed-point theorem.