“…Concerning the mathematical analysis of the system (1.1-1.6), we notice that the existence proof (as in the most part of the systems related to Frémond model, see, e.g., Colli, 1995) relies on a suitable time discretization-a priori estimates-passage to the limit procedure. We remind that the investigation on the error control for problems Downloaded by [North Dakota State University] related to Frémond's model, and in general for phase transition problems, has recently received a good deal of interest as the papers Klein and Verdi (2003) and Stefanelli (1999Stefanelli ( , 2000Stefanelli ( , 2002 show. More precisely, we present the system (1.1-1.6) as an abstract Cauchy problem for two coupled evolution equations, and we investigate in detail its fully implicit time discretization.…”