Homogenization and mechanical dissipation in thermoviscoelasticity (Q1090500)

In this paper the authors investigate the macroscopic mechanical and thermal behaviour of a medium composed of nonhomogeneous viscoelastic materials of Kelvin-Voigt type. The study demonstrates that the classical theories of viscoelasticity with short range memory can be related to the theories of viscoelasticity with fading memory, through homogenization theory. In this contest the microstructure is supposed of periodic type, with a reference cell which contains all the relevant information on the microstructure. The composite materials is described as the composition of scaled versions of the cell by a small scaling parameter \(\epsilon\). When \(\epsilon\) goes to zero, the displacement field is found to converge (weakly) to the displacement of a body, with the same configuration, made of a homogeneous material which is no longer of Kelvin-Voigt type but rather a material with fading memory. A result of strong convergence for the strain rate field is also obtained.