Avoiding waviness of relaxation spectra

Spectra are material functions, whose different integral transforms yield the measurable rheological quantities in the linear viscoelastic regime. Therefore, their knowledge is of high fundamental interest. However, the calculation of spectra from experimental data is an ill-posed problem. Thus, it is hampered by the problem that a too low density of relaxation modes does not lead to a good description of the input data, while a higher one usually causes a wavy spectrum which cannot be interpreted. To overcome this problem, an additional criterion assuming only gradual changes in the spectrum is introduced allowing for an increase in mode density without an enhanced waviness of the spectrum. This is novel in comparison to previously published spectra algorithms and commercial software packages.