On the existence and uniqueness of steady state solutions in thermoelastic contact with frictional heating

It is well known that contact and friction in thermoelasticity result in mathematical problems which may lack solutions or have multiple solutions. Previously, issues related to thermal contact and issues related to frictional heating have been discussed separately. In this work, the two effects are coupled. Theorems of existence and uniqueness of solutions in two or three space dimensions are obtained-essentially extending, to frictional heating, results due to Duvaut, which were built on Barber's heat exchange conditions. Two qualitatively different existence results are given. The first one requires that the contact thermal resistance goes to zero at least as fast as the inverse of the contact pressure. The second existence theorem requires no such growth condition, but requires instead that the frictional heating, i.e. the sliding velocity times the friction coefficient, is small enough. Finally, it is shown that a solution is unique if the inverse of the contact thermal resistance is Lipschitz continuous and the Lipschitz constant, as well as the frictional heating, is small enough.