One-sided contact problems with friction arising along the normal

Abstract

We study a boundary contact problem for a micropolar homogeneous elastic hemitropic medium with regard of friction; in the considered case, friction forces do not arise in the tangential displacement but correspond to a normal displacement of the medium. We consider two cases: the coercive case (in which the elastic body has a fixed part of the boundary) and the noncoercive case (without fixed parts). By using the Steklov–Poincaré operator, we reduce this problem to an equivalent boundary variational inequality. Existence and uniqueness theorems are proved for the weak solution on the basis of properties of general variational inequalities. In the coercive case, the problem is unconditionally solvable, and the solution depends continuously on the data of the original problem. In the noncoercive case, we present closed-form necessary conditions for the existence of a solution of the contact problem. Under additional assumptions, these conditions are also sufficient for the existence of a solution.