The Formal Relationship between Creep and Stress Relaxation

3 The Formal Relationship between Creep and Stress Relaxation 

We have already seen that stress relaxation is the converse of creep in a general sense. It is therefore to be expected that they will be formally related through a simple mathematical relationship. 

For simplicity consider only the time-dependent terms in Equation (5.3). Then 

Consider a stress programme starting at time t = 0 in which the stress decreases exactly as the relaxation function G(t). In this case, the corresponding strain must remain constant as in a typical stress relaxation experiment. Thus, if 

For simplicity we can normalise the definitions of G(r) and /(r) so that the constant is unity. We then have 

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