Analytical solution for a viscoelastic plate on a Pasternak foundation

This work contributed an analytical quasistatic solution to the problem of an infinite viscoelastic plate supported on a Pasternak foundation and subjected to axisymmetric normal loading. The derivation was based on defining a set of iterative functions, each containing information on the plate’s relaxation modulus and on the time-variation of the loading.

By writing the sought solution as a linear combination of these functions it was shown how to decompose the original viscoelastic problem into a set of independent elastic plate problems for which analytical solutions exist. Thus, the plate’s deflection evolution at any point of interest was provided in closed-form, without resorting to integral transform techniques.

The formulation was applied and subsequently validated for several test cases, demonstrating that a very small set of elastic solutions is needed for generating a highly accurate viscoelastic result. Overall, the proposed solution is deemed well suited for engineering calculations, as a computational kernel for backcalculation, and for benchmarking numerical solutions.