Open Access

ARTICLE

A Comparative Investigation of Different Homogenization Methods for Prediction of the Macroscopic Properties of Composites

by Qing-Sheng Yang¹, Wilfried Becker³

1 Department of Engineering Mechanics, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, China
2 Corresponding author: Tel: +86-10-67392760, Fax: +86-10-67391617, Email: qsyang@bjut.edu.cn
3 Institute of Mechanics, Darmstadt University of Technology, D-64289, Germany

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2004, 6(4), 319-332. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2004.006.319

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the comparative investigation of different homogenization methods for fiber composites, void solids and rigid inclusion media. The effective properties of multi-phase media are calculated by three methods, i.e. direct average method of stress and strain, direct average method of strain energy and two-scale expansion method. A comprehensive comparison, in principle and numerically, of these methods is emphasized. It is obvious that the two direct average methods are identical in principle and therefore they give the same numerical results. It is shown that the two-scale expansion method is the same as the direct average concept of field quantities in principle but is expressed by different mathematical form so that it gives very close predictions with that of direct average methods.

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Keywords

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