Overall properties of elastic-viscoplastic periodic composites (Q1126411)

We consider periodic composites with rate-dependent elastic-plastic material response, including nonlinear power-law hardening. Overall stress-strain relations are obtained, and the dependence of these relations on the density of the discretization of the unit cell is studied. Several options, such as the use of mirror image symmetry/antisymmetry, partially analytic summation of Fourier series, and a highly accurate and stable time-integration algorithm help to keep the computational expense low. The formulation is presented in three dimensions as well as for plane-stress and plane-strain problems.