FULLY COUPLED THERMOMECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF VISCOELASTIC SOLIDS TREATED WITH FINITE-ELEMENTS

The paper is concerned with the numerical simulation of thermomechanic al processes for linear viscoelastic solids with special consideration of the dissipative coupling phenomena. A constitutive equation is bas ed on a four-parameter model, the so-called Kelvin-Maxwell model. The fully coupled finite element formulation follows from the mixed thermo mechanical boundary- and initial value problem through the usual time and spatial discretization procedures. A simultaneous solution strateg y yields the unknown values describing both the mechanical and the the rmal field. Illustrative examples, involving static and cyclic loading s, exhibit the viscoelastic behaviour of the material and show the eff iciency of the numerical method within the scope of thermomechanics.