Structure of the constitutive relations for hereditarily elastic materials reinforced by hard fibers

The problem of simplifying the nonlinear hereditary elasticity relations is considered for strongly anisotropic materials such as fiber-reinforced composites. This is done using their property that the material stiffness is high along the reinforcement and is low in the cross-sectional direction. The material is considered transversally isotropic. The simplification is performed by analyzing asymptotic representations of creep relations. Relations of various degrees of accuracy for various types of composites and stress states are obtained. __________ Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika i Tekhnicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 120–127, May–June, 2005.