The aim of the paper is to introduce and investigate a dynamical system which consists of a variational–hemivariational inequality of hyperbolic type combined with a non-linear evolution equation. Such a dynamical system arises in studies of complicated contact problems in mechanics. Existence, uniqueness and regularity of a global solution to the system are established. The approach is based on a new semi-discrete approximation with an application of a surjectivity result for a pseudomonotone perturbation of a maximal monotone operator. A new dynamic viscoelastic frictional contact model with adhesion is studied as an application, in which the contact boundary condition is described by a generalised normal damped response condition with unilateral constraint and a multivalued frictional contact law.

An inverse problem of identifying inhomogeneity or crack in the workpiece made of nonlinear magnetic material is investigated. To recover the shape from the local measurements, a piecewise constant level set algorithm is proposed. By means of the Lagrangian multiplier method, we derive the first variation w.r.t the piecewise constant level set function and obtain the descent direction by the adjoint variable method. Numerical results show the robustness and effectiveness of our algorithm applied to reconstruct some complex shapes.