Application of Finite Viscoelastic Theory to the Deformation of Rubberlike Materials I. Uniaxial Stress Relaxation Data

Abstract

In this report the constitutive equation for finite viscoelastic materials will be postulated as the sum of equilibrium terms and integral terms which describe the viscoelastic behavior of the materials and vanish when the equilibrium state is reached or when the materials have always been at rest. It is also our purpose i) to show how the twelve relaxation functions are reduced to two independent ones in the case that the material has Mooney-Rivlin elastic behavior and that all the relaxation functions depend only on time, ii) to display the mechanics of evaluating the two non-zero relaxation functions from data obtained from uniaxial stress relaxation tests.