ABSTRACT
This chapter is the mathematical study of a system of variational-hemivariational inequalities related to a large class of free boundary problems. Thus the methodology developed in this chapter may be applied to the study of many other free boundary problems of more advanced physical and mechanical structures. In the pilot problem of this Chapter, due to unilateral-bilateral internal stress constraints, the corresponding potential energy is not coercive even with respect to the L1 -norm of the strain tensor. The contact between adjacent laminae of multilayered composite structures cannot be fully described by means of displacements and stresses only, when the possibility of debonding has to be taken into account. This chapter is devoted to the study of the properties of the strain energy function.
