An implicit sweeping process approach to quasistatic evolution variational inequalities

Abstract: In this paper, we study a new variant of Moreau's sweeping process with velocity constraint. Based on an adapted version of Moreau's catching-up algorithm, we show the well-posedness (in the sense existence and uniqueness) of this problem in a general framework. We show the equivalence between this implicit sweeping process and a quasistatic evolution variational inequality. It is well known that the variational formulations of many mechanical problems with unilateral contact and friction lead to an evolution variational inequality. As an application, we reformulate the quasistatic antiplane frictional contact problem for linear elastic materials with short memory as an implicit sweeping process with velocity constraint. The link between the implicit sweeping process and the quasistatic evolution variational inequality is possible thanks to some standard tools from convex analysis and is new in the literature.