Modeling viscoelastic response of particulate polymeric composites with high volume fractions of fillers

A generalized self-consistent method is extended to particulate viscoelastic composites with elastomeric matrices and high volume fractions of elastic inclusions. It is shown that the effective bulk modulus of a composite coincides with the bulk modulus of particles. A quadratic operator equation is derived for an analog of the effective shear relaxation kernel. This equation is explicitly solved using the Laplace transform method. The influence of material and geometrical parameters of a composite on its effective viscoelastic moduli is analyzed numerically.