Abstract: | In this paper, the problem of global existence of solutions to the following initial value problem is studied:, which comes from viscoelastic mechanics. By making use of integral estimates method, it is proved that this problem has a global solution if, in addition to certain regularity assumptions on the given functions, the following conditions are satisfied: p′(s) ≥ c1 > 0, |q′(s)| ≤ const, λ(0) < 0, λ′(0) < λ2(0) |