On a nonlinear elasticity problem with friction and Sobolev spaces with variable exponents

Abstract We consider a nonlinear elasticity problem in a bounded domain, its boundary is decomposed in three parts: lower, upper, and lateral. The displacement of the substance, which is the unknown of the problem, is assumed to satisfy the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions on the upper part, and not homogeneous one on the lateral part, while on the lower part, friction conditions are considered. In addition, the problem is governed by a particular constitutive law of elasticity system with a strongly nonlinear strain tensor. The functional framework leads to using Sobolev spaces with variable exponents. The formulation of the problem leads to a variational inequality, for which we prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the associated variational problem.