| Abstract: | Viscoelasticity and poroelasticity commonly coexist as time-dependent behaviors in polymer gels.Engineering applications often require knowledge of both behaviors separated;however,few methods exist to decouple viscoelastic and poroelastic properties of gels.We propose a method capable of separating viscoelasticity and poroelasticity of gels in various mechanical tests.The viscoelastic characteristic time and the poroelastic difusivity of a gel define an intrinsic material length scale of the gel.The experimental setup gives a sample length scale,over which the solvent migrates in the gel.By setting the sample length to be much larger or smaller than the material length,the viscoelasticity and poroelasticity of the gel will dominate at diferent time scales in a test.Therefore,the viscoelastic and poroelastic properties of the gel can be probed separately at diferent time scales of the test.We further validate the method by finite-element models and stress-relaxation experiments. |
