Constitutive model of a viscoelastic material at finite strains (Q1206697)

A constitutive model for nonlinear isotropic viscoelastic materials is proposed. The model is a direct generalization of one-dimensional polymeric chains which are thought to be formed by springs connected in parallels. The modes of connections between springs change continuously with time and their distributions are measured by the relaxation measure of the material. This leads to a constitutive relation of integral type between the stress and the strain history. The potential energy per unit volume of the material is then calculated as the total potential energy of springs per unit volume. This relation is then generalized to a three- dimensional isotropic material as the sum of finite numbers of elastic potentials. Then equilibrium equations, boundary conditions and constitutive relations are derived from a quasistatic variational principle, and a stability criterion is obtained. As an example, the finite quasistatic deformation of an incompressible rectilinear beam made of neo-Hookean material and subjected to a uniform time-dependent tensile force is studied. Longitudinal stretch is found as a solution of a nonlinear Volterra integral equation.