The article is devoted to determining the properties of linearly viscoelastic isotropic materials from the experiment on the introduction of a spherical indenter at a constant-rate displacement in a viscoelastic sample. The results are based on the Lee-Radok (J. Appl. Mech. 27:438-444, 1960) solution of the viscoelastic contact problem. An exact formula is obtained for calculation of the relaxation function using indentation loaddisplacement data. To illustrate the application of this formula, it is used to find the relaxation function of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). The relaxation function found in the article is compared with data measured in a conventional test to evaluate the suitability of the proposed method.

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