The integral constitutive equations of a multipolar viscoelastic material are analyzed from the thermodynamic point of view. They are shown to be approximated by those of the differential-type viscous materials when the processes are slow. As a consequence of the thermodynamic compatibility of the viscoelastic model, the coefficients of viscosity of the approximate viscous model are shown to have an Onsager-type symmetry. This symmetry was employed earlier in the proof of the existence of solutions...

In this paper we develop and study numerically a model to describe some aspects of sound propagation in the human lung, considered as a deformable and viscoelastic porous medium (the parenchyma) with millions of alveoli filled with air. Transmission of sound through the lung above 1 kHz is known to be highly frequency-dependent. We pursue the key idea that the viscoelastic parenchyma structure is highly heterogeneous on the small scale ε and use two-scale homogenization techniques to derive effective...