A Circuit Model of Hysteresis and Creep

A circuit architecture that models hysteretic phenomena is proposed. The model is flexible enough to reproduce both rate-independent hysteresis and thermal relaxation effects (creep), commonly observed in many real-world physical systems such as piezoelectric actuators. By suitably tuning the nonlinear characteristics of the resistive elements of the network, the well-known log(t) time dependence of the creep relaxation dynamics can be accurately reproduced. An identification procedure is proposed, and two test cases are discussed.