ABSTRACT
Viscoelastic materials exhibit both flow and stretch in their behavior. Two fundamental arrangements of the dashpot-spring combination are possible and are illustrated in Figure 7.1. Materials behaving according to the series model respond to an applied stress initially by stretching and then by flowing, the stretching being characterized by the spring elasticity G and the flow by the dashpot viscosity . The time-scale of the stretching process is very much less than that of the viscous flow so that a plot of strain versus time for a material behaving according to this Maxwell model is as illustrated in Figure 7.2.
