“…Note that in[1] a variable time step is discussed where the step size is adjusted depending on the energy release, see also[9, Elastic time step, Dissipative time step, p. 6].4 Analytical resultsThe following results are presented here without proofs. The detailed arguments can be found in[1]. At first, we introduce the notation△ε n h = ε n h −ε n−1 h and △z n h = z n h −z n−1 h and define interpolants (z h , v h , ε h , σ h ) ∈ L 2 (0, T ; V cf h ×V dg h ×W dg h ×W dg h ) by (z h , v h , ε h , σ h )(t) = (z n h , v n h , ε n h , σ n h ) in (t n−1 h , t n h ) and ( żh , εh ) ∈ L 2 (0, T ; V cf h ×W dg h ) by ( żh , εh )(t) = 1 △t n h (△z n h , △ε n h ) for t ∈ (t n−1 h , t n h ).To establish existence of discrete solutions, for (S2) a linear system of equations has to be solved while the damage evolution (S1) is more involved due to the nonlinearities coming from the Yosida term and the z-dependence of the elastic term.Lemma 4.1 (Existence of discrete solutions) Let the assumptions stated in Sect.…”