On Determination of the Linear Viscoelastic Compliance and Relaxation Functions for Polymers in One Tensile Test

Usually, the viscoelastic (VE) response of polymers for applications in composites is obtained in uniaxial strainor stress-controlled tests. However, analyzing multimaterial structures by the Finite Element Method (FEM) or by other numerical or analytical tools, a material model in terms of a complete set of compliance functions and/or relaxation functions is required. In this paper, a methodology and exact analytical expressions for calculating the whole set of VE functions is presented based on the relaxation modulus E ( t )and Poisson’s ratio v ( t ) determined in strain-controlled tests. The method is based on Laplace transforms, where an exact inversion is possible if a linear VE model with functions in Prony series is used. Results of the analytical model are compared with the FEM simulation, where specific boundary conditions to determine each particular VE function are used. Finally, the applicability of the so-called quasi-elastic method is investigated, where the expressions of elasticity theory are used to calculate a given viscoelastic function at an instant of time t k using the instant values of E ( t k ) and v ( t k ). For isotropic materials, the three approaches render almost coinciding results.