Effective properties of elastic materials that contain penny shaped voids (Q1058370)

It is known that the distribution of the orientation of voids can be represented by a sequence of even rank irreducible (damage) tensors. This result and the decomposition of the tensor of elastic moduli into its irreducible components and the theorem of minimum complementary energy enable us to obtain a good estimate for the effective compliance of an isotropic elastic matrix that contains a dilute distribution of penny shaped voids. We show that the (approximate) effective moduli depend only on two damage tensors \(V_{ij}\) and \(V_{ijk\ell}\) and on five scalar coefficients to be obtained from the solution of a ''simple'' stress boundary value problem of elasticity.