Dear All,

I have modeled some polymer components and I have faced difficulties to obtain accurate modal results.
It is mandatory for most automotive parts to survive vibration tests (physical ones), including long life and mechanical shock.
The FEA for the assessment of the mechanical integrity of such parts comes first, before the physical prototypes are available, and it is common practice to run linear dynamic analysis using linear elastic material properties. This modeling approach not always gives good correlation between the simulation results and physical tests with noticeable differences in the extracted natural frequencies some times.
Is anyone in the simulation community who would like to share his/her thoughts or best practices on how to model the polymer materials for the assessment of their modal response with confidence? Is the frequency domain viscoelasticity a good alternative?

Thanks.