Modeling via the internal energy balance and analysis of adhesive contact with friction in thermoviscoelasticity

In this paper we introduce and investigate a model for adhesive contact with friction between a thermoviscoelastic body and a rigid support. A PDE system, consisting of the evolution equations for the temperatures in the bulk domain and on the contact surface, of the momentum balance, and of the equation for the internal variable describing the state of the adhesion, is derived on the basis of a surface damage theory by M. Frémond. The existence of global-in-time solutions to the associated initial-boundary value problem is proved by passing to the limit in a carefully tailored time-discretization scheme.