ABSTRACT
The problem of viscoelastic stability, or as it was called 'creep buckling', has emerged at the end of 1940s. It was observed that some structures collapsed after some time had elapsed after loading. That period was called 'critical time'. The researchers developed methods to calculate the critical time for various structures and investigated whether there was any connection between the elastic and the viscoelastic stability. Many studies have been published on that topic (the first reliable summary was published in 1962 [KEMPNER]), and some of them gave real impetus to research. These studies and their results will be treated in this chapter. Although the term 'creep buckling' is widely used in the literature, the expression 'viscoelastic stability' will be preferred in this chapter, because it indicates that the material of the structure has an instantaneous elastic response to the loading and the expression 'stability' is somewhat more general than the word 'buckling'.
