A Computer program for linear viscoelastic characterization by Prony Series

Abstract

This work describes the computer implementation and the main features of a new software that characterizes viscoelastic materials. This new proposed software is based on the representation of viscoelastic functions (relaxation modulus and creep compliance) by a Prony series, which the literature has proved to be a representative and computational efficient function for viscoelastic materials. Although the Prony series has these desired characteristics, it is not an easy task to obtain it from experimental data because it involves many numerical steps, which result in a non-practical method to be performed in a common spreadsheet software. In order to avoid such difficulties, this specific software was conceived to read experimental data and promptly output the fitted Prony series in a faster way. It was comprehensively used the object-oriented approach in C++ computer language associated with open-source wxWidgets graphical library. In order to give a general overview of the implemented code, the main classes for both numerical and graphical interface are shown. The main features available on this software are: construction of master curves; collocation method and least squares method to fit Prony series; possibility to set the independent term,the time constants and the number of dependent terms of the Prony series; and interconversion between viscoelastic functions.