  In this paper we analyze a broad class of abstract doubly nonlinear evolution
equations in Banach spaces, driven by nonsmooth and nonconvex energies. We
provide some general sufficient conditions, on the dissipation potential and
the energy functional,for existence of solutions to the related Cauchy problem.
We prove our main existence result by passing to the limit in a
time-discretization scheme with variational techniques. Finally, we discuss an
application to a material model in finite-strain elasticity.
