The Boundary Element Method for Plate Analysis

4.4 Viscoelastic plates

4.4.1 Viscoelastic plates

Thin plates of viscoelastic material are extensively used as structural members in many modern engineering applications such as aircrafts, ships, and other industrial structures. Viscoelastic materials, such as polymers, exhibit both elastic and viscous character and have the advantage of light weight and high strength. There have been proposed various linear and nonlinear models for the mechanical behavior of these materials, e.g., Maxwell, Voigt, Zener, and multi-parameter models. The constitutive equations can be presented in differential or in hereditary integral form. Recently, many researchers have shown that differential viscoelastic models with fractional derivatives are in better agreement ...