Balanced-viscosity Solutions for Multi-rate Systems

Several mechanical systems are modeled by the static momentum balance for the displacement u coupled with a rate-independent flow rule for some internal variable z. We consider a class of abstract systems of ODEs which have the same structure, albeit in a finite-dimensional setting, and regularize both the static equation and the rate-independent flow rule by adding viscous dissipation terms with coefficients εα and ε, where 0 < ε 1 and α > 0 is a fixed parameter. Therefore for α 6= 1 u and z have different relaxation rates. We address the vanishing-viscosity analysis as ε ↓ 0 of the viscous system. We prove that, up to a subsequence, (reparameterized) viscous solutions converge to a parameterized curve yielding a Balanced Viscosity solution to the original rate-independent system, and providing an accurate description of the system behavior at jumps. We also give a reformulation of the notion of Balanced Viscosity solution in terms of a system of subdifferential inclusions, showing that the viscosity in u and the one in z are involved in the jump dynamics in different ways, according to whether α > 1, α = 1, and α ∈ (0, 1).