Global existence and uniqueness for a thermomechanical model for shape memory alloys with partition of the strain

This paper investigates an initial and boundary value problem describing the thermomechanical behavior of shape memory alloys. In the strain tensor an elastic contribution is combined with a phase transformation term, for which only one of the phases turns out to be responsible. In particular, the solid-solid phase transition between the austenite phase and the martensites is described by two functionals, the free energy and the pseudo-potential of dissipation. A global existence and uniqueness result is stated by use of a fixed point argument and contracting estimates technique.