We consider a viscoelastic body occupying a smooth bounded domain of $R^3$ under the effects of volumic traction forces. Inertial effects are considered: hence, the equation describing the evolution of displacements is of the second order in time. On
a part of the boundary of the domain, the body is anchored to a support and no displacement may occur; on a second part, the body can move freely; on a third portion of the boundary, the body is in adhesive contact with a solid support. The boundary forces acting there as a byproduct of elastic stresses are responsible for delamination, i.e., progressive failure of adhesive bonds. This phenomenon is mathematically represented by a boundary variable that represents the local fraction of active bonds and is assumed to satisfy a doubly nonlinear ODE. Following the lines of a new approach based on duality methods in Sobolev-Bochner spaces, we define a suitable concept of weak solution to the resulting system of equations. Correspondingly, we prove an existence result on finite time intervals of arbitrary length.
A weak formulation for the so-called semilinear strongly damped wave equation with constraint is introduced and a corresponding notion of solution is defined. The main idea in this approach consists in the use of duality techniques in Sobolev-Bochner
spaces, aimed at providing a suitable relaxation of the constraint term. A global in time existence result is proved under the natural condition that the initial data have finite physical energy.
