Second-order two-scale computational method for ageing linear viscoelastic problem in composite materials with periodic structure

The correspondence principle is an important mathematical technique to compute the non-ageing linear viscoelastic problem as it allows to take advantage of the computational methods originally developed for the elastic case. However, the correspon- dence principle becomes invalid when the materials exhibit ageing. To deal with this problem, a second-order two-scale （SOTS） computational method in the time domain is presented to predict the ageing linear viscoelastic performance of composite materials with a periodic structure. First, in the time domain, the SOTS formulation for calcu- lating the effective relaxation modulus and displacement approximate solutions of the ageing viscoelastic problem is formally derived. Error estimates of the displacement ap- proximate solutions for SOTS method are then given. Numerical results obtained by the SOTS method are shown and compared with those by the finite element method in a very fine mesh. Both the analytical and numerical results show that the SOTS computational method is feasible and efficient to predict the ageing linear viscoelastic performance of composite materials with a periodic structure.