Analysis of a contact problem for a viscoelastic Bresse system

In this paper, we consider a contact problem between a viscoelastic Bresse beam and a deformable obstacle. The well-known normal compliance contact condition is used to model the contact. The existence of a unique solution to the continuous problem is proved using the Faedo-Galerkin method. An exponential decay property is also obtained defining an adequate Liapunov function. Then, using the finite element method and the implicit Euler scheme, a finite element approximation is introduced. A discrete stability property and a priori error estimates are proved. Finally, some numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the decay of the discrete energy and the numerical convergence.