Visco-elastodynamics at large strains Eulerian

Abstract

Isothermal visco-elastodynamics in the Kelvin-Voigt rheology is formulated in the spatial Eulerian coordinates in terms of velocity and deformation gradient. A generally nonconvex (possibly also frame-indifferent) stored energy is admitted. The model involves a nonlinear 2nd-grade nonsimple (multipolar) viscosity so that the velocity field is well regular. To simplify analytical arguments, volume variations of the solid material material are assumed only rather small so that the mass density is constant, exploiting the concept of semi-compressible materials. Existence of weak solutions is proved by using the Galerkin method combined with a suitable regularization, using nontrivial results about transport by smooth velocity fields.