Perspective Chapter: Viscoelastic Mechanical Equivalent Models

Today, we are living in a polymeric era where thousands of daily used products are manufactured from some polymeric materials with different tasks and under a wide range of ambient conditions, including time duration of loading and working condition temperature. This leads to focusing light spot on behavior of such specific materials and investigating the strain associated with the applied stress to understand both of creep and stress relaxation behavior of the loaded polymeric components. Hence, this chapter deals with the estimation of induced strain allied with the applied force on a polymeric material via establishing the so-called mechanical equivalent models starting from the simple elastic element (spring with a modulus of elasticity E), simple viscous element (damper or dashpot with fluid viscosity η), Maxwell model, Voigt model, modified Maxwell model, modified Voigt model, and Maxwell-Voigt model. The theoretical analysis was built on derivation of the prompted deformation, as a function of time in each of the employed models, as a result of the applied external load (force) and then by depending on Hook’s law transforming the gained expressions into stress (σ) and strain (ε) notation, followed by comparing the obtained equation with the general formula of the Hook’s law to find exact values of the constant and as coefficients of the stress and strain. Final theoretical analysis showed that Maxwell’s modified model was the best describing behavior of a loaded polymeric material to some extent followed by the other models.