Thermo-visco-elasticity with rate-independent plasticity in isotropic materials undergoing thermal expansion
We consider a viscoelastic solid in Kelvin-Voigt rheology exhibiting also plasticity with hardening and coupled with heat-transfer through dissipative heat production by viscoplastic effects and through thermal expansion and corresponding adiabatic effects. Numerical discretization of the thermodynamically consistent model is proposed by implicit time discretization, suitable regularization, and finite elements in space. Fine a-priori estimates are derived, and convergence is proved by careful successive...