A state-space approach for the dynamic analysis of viscoelastic systems

This paper presents a state-space method for the calculation of dynamic response of systems made of viscoelastic materials with exponential type relaxation kernels. Equivalent first-order systems in state-space, which respectively correspond to the homogeneous and particular solutions of the viscoelastic system, are formulated and analyzed. These two equivalent systems are solved using standard state-space methods, which greatly simplifies the analysis procedure of viscoelastic systems. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the present approach and highlight the improvement as compared to previous methods.