Fractional differential equations and related exact mechanical models

The aim of the paper is the description of fractional-order differential equations in terms of exact mechanical models. This result will be archived, in the paper, for the case of linear multiphase fractional hereditariness involving linear combinations of power-laws in relaxation/creep functions. The mechanical model corresponding to fractional-order differential equations is the extension of a recently introduced exact mechanical representation (Di Paola and Zingales (2012) [33] and Di Paola et al. (2012) [34]) of fractional-order integrals and derivatives. Some numerical applications have been reported in the paper to assess the capabilities of the model in terms of a peculiar arrangement of linear springs and dashpots. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.