The theory of dust-acoustic waves in plasmas with strongly coupled dusts is
reviewed. Physical effects needed for a self-consistent description, such
as dust-charge variation, collisional dissipation, ionization and recombina
tion, which are usually on the same time scale, are included. The strong du
st coupling is represented by a viscoelastic relaxation model with a waveve
ctor dependent relaxation time. It is found that the dispersion properties
of the dust acoustic waves can be considerably affected by the strong coupl
ing and relaxation processes.