Optimal bounds for the effective energy of a mixture of isotropic, incompressible, elastic materials (Q1114470)

The aim of this paper is to give the bounding formulas for the strain energy of a composite material made by mixing two incompressible, isotropic, lineary elastic solids in prescribed portions. The mechanical problem of the periodic mixture of two incompressible isotropic, lineary elastic materials leads to an elliptical system. The effective stress- strain tensor C of the mixture is obtained by using the fundamental theorem of homogenization. The effective strain energy of the mixture is a quadratic form (C\(\xi\),\(\xi)\), where \(\xi\) is the strain tensor. The goal is to bound the (C\(\xi\),\(\xi)\) in terms of the shear moduli \(\mu_ 1\), \(\mu_ 2\) of the two components and their relative portions \(\theta_ 1\) and \(\theta_ 2=1-\theta_ 1\) in the mixture, and the strain tensor. The result of the paper is the relation (1) \(f_-\leq (C\xi,\xi)\leq f_+,\) where \(f_{\pm}=f_{\pm}(\mu_ 1,\mu_ 2;\theta_ 1,\theta_ 2;\xi)\) are explicitly computable functions. The proof of the optimal lower bound is based on the Hashin-Shtrikman variational principle. The bounds in (1) are optimal in the sense that no better bounds for (C\(\xi\),\(\xi)\) are possible when \(\xi\), \(\mu_ 1\), \(\mu_ 2\), \(\theta_ 1\) and \(\theta_ 2\) are fixed.