The vibration and vibrational heating of a rectangular prism with copper and polyethylene layers is studied by solving numerically a coupled problem of thermoelasticity. The cases of kinematic and mechanical harmonic shear loads on a section of the prism surface are examined. Local heating regions are revealed. They are due to the stress fields in the neighborhood of the points at which the type of boundary conditions changes. The temperature-time curves have preresonance, resonant, and postresonance sections. The heating process reaches a steady thermal state under kinematic loading and may become avalanche-like (which is typical of thermal instability) under mechanical loading Keywords: viscoelastic material, vibrational heating, layered prism, shear loading Introduction. The vibrational heating of viscoelastic bodies is of theoretical and practical importance for the assessment of the fatigue strength of polymeric, including mechanical-rubber products [3, 5,17] and for the development of efficient polymer processes such as ultrasonic welding [4].Vibrational-heating models for linear and nonlinear viscoelastic and viscoplastic bodies are justified in numerous studies [8,13,15,19,23], their results being systematized and generalized in the monograph [5] and reviews [11,12,22]. An analysis of the experimental and theoretical studies [14,19,23] reveals that the coupled thermomechanical behavior of inelastic bodies under harmonic loading is well described with the help of the concept of complex moduli [14,16,18,20].So far, the major results on the subject have been obtained for homogeneous bodies. Some patterns of vibrational heating of bodies with stress concentrators such as holes, inclusions, or notches were studied in [6,7]. Also, of practical importance are laminated viscoelastic composites used to make products to be subjected to intensive cyclic loading. The relationship between the accumulated and dissipated distortion and dilatation energies for different thicknesses of polymeric layers in a layered disk under isothermal quasistatic compression is analyzed in [20,21].Vibration, vibrational heating, and thermal instability of a layered rectangular metal-polymer prism under normal harmonic loading are addressed in [10].Structural members and technological objects such as layered thin parts may be subject to high-frequency shear loading during ultrasonic welding. Such a loading is specific in that mainly the distortion energy is dissipated. The contribution of the dissipated dilatation energy to the total dissipated mechanical energy is insignificant.By solving a coupled problem of thermoviscoelasticity [5, 18], we will study the vibration and vibrational heating of a rectangular prism consisting of metal and polymeric layers and subjected to high-frequency kinematic and mechanical shear loading. The problem is solved numerically modeling the prism by a piecewise-nonuniform body with temperature-dependent properties.