A comparison of finite element formulations for dynamics of viscoelastic beams

Linear viscoelasticity has been used for a long time in structural analysis of time-dependent materials. For finite elements, it can be described using the internal variable formulation and the ‘anelastic displacement field’ (ADF) method. In this paper, two variants of the method are developed and tested on numerical examples. Based on the experiences, a slightly modified version of the original ADF method is suggested for use with linear viscoelasticity.