Improved rigorous bounds on the effective elastic moduli of a composite material (Q795538)

The authors present a new approach to the calculation of rigorous bounds on the effective elastic constants of a composite material. Writing the elastic constants as a sum of simple poles they reduce the problem to that of the evaluation of the locations and weights of these poles. Especially it is shown how to apply this method to the case when only partial information is available on the microgeometry of the system. So the range of validity of the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds is extended to the case of composites made of isotropic materials with an arbitrary microgeometry. The authors use certain informations as constraints in order to improve the bounds. The improvements are demonstrated by means of numerically worked out examples.