Prediction of stress in a linear viscoelastic solid strained while cooling

A simplethermoelastic method is proposed, and justified, for predicting stresses arising during cooling of a linearviscoelastic solid. It is equivalent to representing the material by an array of spring-switch thermoelastic elements. The final stress resulting from an increment of strain is calculated using isochronal modulus data applying to the temperature at which the strain was applied, modified to accommodate temperature dependence of the limiting moduli. The method is exact for a material whose relaxation times and limiting moduli scale uniformly with change in temperature, with time-temperature shift factora _T obeying the Arrhenius equation, cooled such that reciprocal absolute temperature is linear in time. For other cooling sequences it is useful as an approximation. In particular, it assists the computational prediction of stresses arising during cooling in polymer processes.