Computational evaluation of effective stress relaxation behavior of polymer composites

This paper presents a micromechanics model to characterize the effective stress relaxation stiffness of polymer composites. The linear viscoelastic behavior of polymer material was modeled by hereditary integral. The proposed model was established based on the variational asymptotic method for unit cell homogenization (VAMUCH). All computations with this model were accomplished in the time domain, hence the Laplace transform and inversion commonly used for linear viscoelastic composites are not needed in this theory. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed model were verified by comparing with the results and utilization of finite element models developed using ABAQUS.