Existence and construction of bipotentials for graphs of multivalued laws

This is a first paper in convex analysis dedicated to the bipotential theory, based on an extension of Fenchel's inequality. Introduced by the second author, bipotentials lead to a succesful new treatment of the constitutive laws of some dissipative materials: frictional contact, non-associated Drucker-Prager model, or Lemaitre plastic ductile damage law. We solve here the problems of existence and construction of a bipotential for a nonsmooth mechanics constitutive law.