Project Description
This plugin implements the fundamental linear viscoelastic constitutive laws applied to tetrahedral meshes. Viscoelasticity is a property of elastomeric materials that influences their mechanical behavior under dynamic conditions.
Viscoelastic constitutive equations are dependent on the stress/strain rate. At low stress/strain rates, a viscoelastic material behaves like a viscous liquid-like material, while at high stress/strain rates, the same material behaves like a Hookean solid. In fact, the simplest viscoelastic models are the Maxwell and the Kelvin-Voigt models. These models are composed of an elastic part described by the spring symbol and a viscous one. Anyway, the Maxwell and the Kelvin-Voigt models describe the behavior of a few kinds of materials, like silly-putty, gels, etc. Furthermore, they are theoretical models that are not stable under creep (Maxwell) or stress relaxations (Kelvin-Voigt) conditions. Elastomers and rubbers are polymeric materials present in nature but are also used in several industrial applications.
Many research fields are involved in developing and using new elastomeric materials and rubbers, such as soft robotics and surgical applications. For this reason, this plugin is indicated for users who want a realistic mechanical simulation of these materials afflicted by the viscoelastic effect. To describe their viscoelastic properties, different viscoelastic models have to be used, like the Standard Linear Solid (SLS) Maxwell/Kelvin-Voigt representation.
This plugin makes available 9 different viscoelastic models. For more theoretical information the users can refer to the paper “Considering the viscoelastic effects in soft robotic modeling” by Ferrentino et al. submitted in Soft Robotic Journal (SORO).
Comments are closed.