Doubly nonlinear evolution equations of second order: Existence and fully discrete approximation

Existence of solutions for a class of doubly nonlinear evolution equations of second order is proven by studying a full discretization. The discretization combines a time stepping on a non-uniform time grid, which generalizes the well-known Störmer–Verlet scheme, with an internal approximation scheme.The linear operator acting on the zero-order term is supposed to induce an inner product, whereas the nonlinear time-dependent operator acting on the first-order time derivative is assumed to be hemicontinuous, monotone and coercive (up to some additive shift), and to fulfill a certain growth condition. The analysis also extends to the case of additional nonlinear perturbations of both the operators, provided the perturbations satisfy a certain growth and a local Hölder-type continuity condition. A priori estimates are then derived in abstract fractional Sobolev spaces.Convergence in a weak sense is shown for piecewise polynomial prolongations in time of the fully discrete solutions under suitable requirements on the sequence of time grids.