Viscoelasticity Measurement and Identification of Viscoelastic Parametric Models

Generally speaking, the behaviour of viscoelastic material is more complicated than the behaviour proposed by classical models as Voigt, Maxwell or Zener. The stiffness of such materials is a frequency dependent complex function. Above 1000Hz, classical measurements techniques are unable to achieve accurate measurements of the stiffness. In this paper, a new Dynamical Mechanical Analysis (DMA) tester is presented. It allows the characterization of the shear stiffness of preloaded viscoelastic materials between 200 and 3500Hz and without using frequency-temperature equivalences. Then the Generalized Maxwell model is used to describe behaviours measured with the DMA tester. A new iterative identification method of the parameter of the Generalized Maxwell model is described. This identification method is based on the asymptotes of the model.