The importance of the compatibility of nonlinear constitutive theories with their linear counterparts

We show, by considering a special class of nonlinear viscoelastic materials, that consistency of a mechanical model with classical linear viscoelasticity, may be a fundamental condition to ensure a mathematical and physical well-posedness behavior. To illustrate our arguments we use a rectilinear class of shear motions that we investigate in the static and quasistatic case in the framework of a simple boundary value problem and the classical recovery phenomenon.