ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the viscoelastic behavior of representative real materials so that the reader can gain a sense of orders of magnitude of the effects. Engineers and scientists who deal with elastic behavior of materials are aware of the moduli of various common materials. Similarly, knowledge of the viscoelastic properties of particular materials is essential to rationally apply them. Polymers exhibit an aging behavior in their viscoelastic properties as a function of time following polymerization. Although compact bone is a complex composite material, secondary creep is a simpler aspect of its viscoelastic behavior, and it appears to be thermally activated. The load-deformation behavior discloses nonlinearly viscoelastic behavior in that the hysteresis curve is nonlinear and encloses some area. Viscoelasticity in the foam manifests itself in creep under transient tests, and energy dissipation in dynamic studies. The phenomenology of viscoelastic response has been presented for many materials. Various materials differ substantially in their viscoelastic response.
