Boundary Element Calculation of Transient Response of Viscoelastic Solids Based on Inverse Transformation

Mixed boundary value problems of solid mechanics are treated by numericalsolutions of Boundary Integral Equations (BIE) in time domain with theBoundary Element Method (BEM) thus reducing the spatial problem dimensionby one. Viscoelastic constitutive behaviour is implemented by means of aLaplace transform technique based on an elastic--viscoelasticcorrespondence principle. The concept of fractional differintegrationgeneralizes conventional constitutive equations and provides improvedcurve fitting of measured material response with fewer parameters. As theimplementation of viscoelasticity is provided in each time step in theLaplace domain, efficient algorithms for the inverse transformation intime domain are needed. This is why the performance of adapted algorithmsby Talbot, Durbin and Crump are compared. The impact responseof a base plate bonded on a viscoelastic soil halfspace is discussed as anumerical example. Viscous forces increase the velocities of surface wavepropagation and cause attenuation in addition to the so called geometricaldamping by radiation.