Intraphase strain heterogeneity in nonlinear composites: a computational approach

Recent progress in the analysis of nonlinear composites or polycrystals suggests that higher-order moments of the local fields in individual phases could play a significant role on the effective properties of such composites. The present study is devoted to a detailed computational investigation of the first and second moment of the strain fields. It shows that the predictive schemes belonging to the class of Secant methods underestimate significantly the second moments of the strain field. As a consequence, their predictions are too stiff in comparison with numerical simulations. (C) 2003 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.