From visco-energetic to energetic and balanced viscosity solutions of rate-independent systems

Abstract

This paper focuses on weak solvability concepts for rate-independent systems in a metric setting. Visco-Energetic solutions have been recently obtained by passing to the time-continuous limit in a time-incremental scheme, akin to that for Energetic solutions, but perturbed by a ‘viscous’ correction term, as in the case of Balanced Viscosity solutions. However, for Visco-Energetic solutions this viscous correction is tuned by a fixed parameter μ. The resulting solution notion is characterized by a stability condition and an energy balance analogous to those for Energetic solutions, but, in addition, it provides a fine description of the system behavior at jumps as Balanced Viscosity solutions do. Visco-Energetic evolution can be thus thought as ‘in-between’ Energetic and Balanced Viscosity evolution. Here we aim to formalize this intermediate character of Visco-Energetic solutions by studying their singular limits as μ ↓ 0 and μ ↑∞. We shall prove convergence to Energetic solutions in the former case, and to Balanced Viscosity solutions in the latter situation.