Abstract
In this paper we present a novel integration strategy to solve the evolution equations of deformable, nonlinear elements that possess viscoelastic mechanical response coupled with thermal dissipation. These types of elements may be found in a large number of every-day mechanical systems, such as vehicle suspensions, vibration absorbers for structures and machinery, etc. The proposed formulation is shown to be thermodynamically consistent, in the sense that energy is preserved and entropy never decreases in isolated systems. In addition, the conservation laws of linear and angular momentum are exactly preserved in the discrete setting. The development of the proposed algorithm is presented and numerical simulations will be provided to ilustrate the excellent performance of the method in terms of stability. This characteristic is directly related to the ability to preserve the structure of the continuum evolution equations, complying rigorously with the two laws of thermodynamics. The main conclusion is that the proposed methodology clearly outperforms classical methods widely in purely mechanical problems, and it is easy to incorporate to existing multibody formulations currently employed in many commercial and research codes.
