UNIAXIAL RATCHETTING IN LINEAR VISCOELASTICITY

The aim of this paper is to discuss the behaviour of linear viscoelast icity laws for cyclic stress controlled loading histories. In particul ar, attention is drawn to the so-called ratchetting phenomenon. The an alysis is based on sawtooth input functions for the stress with consta nt absolute value for the stress rate. For these functions, analytical formulas are derived and explicit expressions for the strain incremen t per cycle, the cycle dependent mean strain, as well as the asymptoti c strains, are given.