Structured viscoelastic substrates as linear foundations

TL;DR

This paper extends the classical Winkler foundation model to structured viscoelastic materials, deriving a foundation modulus that accounts for microstructural properties, enabling better modeling and characterization of complex substrates.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Winkler foundation model for viscoelastic structured materials, linking the foundation modulus to microstructural parameters and boundary conditions.

Findings

Derived the foundation modulus as a function of film thickness, correlation length, and viscoelastic properties.

Provided formulas for three boundary condition scenarios.

Facilitated extraction of material properties from surface measurements.

Abstract

The linear (Winkler) foundation is a simple model widely used for decades to account for the surface response of elastic bodies. It models the response as purely local, linear, and perpendicular to the surface. We extend this model to the case where the foundation is made of a structured material such as a polymer network, which has characteristic scales of length and time. We use the two-fluid model of viscoelastic structured materials to treat a film of finite thickness, supported on a rigid solid and subjected to a concentrated normal force at its free surface. We obtain the foundation modulus (Winkler constant) as a function of the film's thickness, intrinsic correlation length, and viscoelastic moduli, for three choices of boundary conditions. The results can be used to readily extend earlier applications of the Winkler model to more complex, microstructured substrates. They also provide a way to extract the intrinsic properties of such complex materials from mechanical surface measurements.