Genetic algorithm for the determination of linear viscoelastic relaxation spectrum from experimental data

Abstract Conventional procedures employed in the modeling of viscoelastic properties of polymer rely on the determination of the polymer's discrete relaxation spectrum from experimentally obtained data. In the past decades, several analytical regression techniques have been proposed to determine an explicit equation which describes the measured spectra. With a diverse approach, the procedure herein introduced constitutes a simulation‐based computational optimization technique based on non‐deterministic search method arisen from the field of evolutionary computation. Instead of comparing numerical results, this purpose of this paper is to highlight some subtle differences between both strategies and focus on what properties of the exploited technique emerge as new possibilities for the field. In oder to illustrate this, essayed cases show how the employed technique can outperform conventional approaches in terms of fitting quality. Moreover, in some instances, it produces equivalent results with much fewer fitting parameters, which is convenient for computational simulation applications. The problem formulation and the rationale of the highlighted method are herein discussed and constitute the main intended contribution. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009