Global existence for a contact problem with adhesion

In this paper, we analyze a contact problem with irreversible adhesion between a viscoelastic body and a rigid support. On the basis of Fremond's theory, we detail the derivation of the model and of the resulting partial differential equation system. Hence, we prove the existence of global in time solutions (to a suitable variational formulation) of the related Cauchy problem by means of an approximation procedure, combined with monotonicity and compactness tools, and with a prolongation argument. In fact the approximate problem (for which we prove a local well-posedness result) models a contact phenomenon in which the occurrence of repulsive dynamics is allowed for. We also show local uniqueness of the solutions, and a continuous dependence result under some additional assumptions. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.