A FINITE-ELEMENT SOLUTION OF PLANE-WAVE PROPAGATION IN INHOMOGENEOUS LINEAR VISCOELASTIC SOLIDS

A simple finite element procedure is presented in this paper for plane wave propagation in inhomogeneous linear viscoelastic solids. Because of the employment of the differential form of the constitutive relati ons in the governing equations, the standard finite element spatial di scretization results in a set of higher order ordinary differential eq uations. An explicit method is then developed to perform direct time i ntegration. Numerical results for several example problems were obtain ed, which are in excellent agreement with solutions using the method o f characteristics. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited