Nonlinear relations of viscous stress and strain rate in nonlinear Viscoelasticity

Abstract: We consider a Kelvin-Voigt model for viscoelastic second-grade materials, where the elastic and the viscous stress tensor both satisfy frame indifference. Using a rigidity estimate by [Ciarlet-Mardare '15], existence of weak solutions is shown by means of a frame-indifferent time-discretization scheme. Further, the result includes viscous stress tensors which can be calculated by nonquadratic polynomial densities. Afterwards, we investigate the long-time behavior of solutions in the case of small external loading and initial data. Our main tool is the abstract theory of metric gradient flows.