Viscoelastic thermal stress analysis

The viscoelastic/elastic analogy leads directly to the viscoelastic solution for thermal stresses in a variety of glass-to-metal seals. This paper examines the conditions which must be met for that approach to be applicable, and shows that it cannot be used in most bodies with spatially varying temperature or composition. A method is presented which leads easily to solutions for the stresses in tempered or ion-exchanged plates, and in glass-to-glass sandwich seals. In the latter case, calculated stresses agree well with measured stresses reported in the literature.