Visco-elastic behavior through fractional calculus: An easier method for best fitting experimental results

In capturing visco-elastic behavior, experimental tests play a fundamental rule, since they allow to build up theoretical constitutive laws very useful for simulating their own behavior. The main challenge is representing the visco-elastic materials through simple models, in order to spread their use. However, the wide used models for capturing both relaxation and creep tests are combinations of simple models as Maxwell and/or Kelvin, that depend on several parameters for fitting both creep and relaxation tests. This paper, following Nutting and Gemant idea of fitting experimental data through a power law function, aims at stressing the validity of fractional model. In fact, as soon as relaxation test is well fitted by power law decay then the fractional constitutive law involving Caputo's derivative directly appears. It will be shown that fractional model is proper for studying visco-elastic behavior, since it may capture both relaxation and creep tests, requiring the identification of two parameters only. This consideration is assessed by the good agreement between experimental tests on creep and relaxation and the fractional model proposed. Experimental tests, here reported are performed on two polymers having different chemical physical properties such that the fractional model may cover a wide range of visco-elastic behavior. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.