Thermal stresses in a viscoelastic cylinder with temperature dependent properties
N appoximate solution to the problem of transient thermal stresses in a "long" viscoelastic hollow cylinder with temperature-dependent properties is presented. The approximation consists in averaging the value of the vioselastic "Poisson's" ratio over the whole reduced time interval. The fact that stress distributions in solids are, in general, insensitive to Poisson's ratio variations and the narrow limits of variation of *>(£) leads us to believe that the effect of this approximation will be small. It is shown in Fig. 1 that in the case of the infinite viscoelastic slab the exact and approximate solutions are very close. The solution is immediately applicable to such practical problems as "stress accumulation due to thermal cycling" and "shrinkage stresses" in viscoelastic cylinders. It is hoped that the present method will replace previous unrealistic methods of analysis that were based on the assumption that viscoelastic material properties are independent of temperature.