Young-measure quasi-static damage evolution

An existence result for the quasi-static evolution of incomplete damage in elastic materials is presented. The absence of gradient terms in the damage variable causes a critical lack of compactness. Therefore, the analysis is developed in the framework of Young measures, where a notion of solution is defined, presenting some improvements with respect to previous contributions. The main new feature in the proof of the existence result regards a delicate construction of the joint-recovery sequence. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.