The representative volume size in static and dynamic micro-macro transitions

Two homogenisation schemes (first-order or local, and second-order or non-local) are employed in this paper. In case second-order homogenisation is applied, it turns out that elastic behaviour at the micro-scale implies the appearance of second-order space and time derivatives of macroscopic strain in an otherwise elastic constitutive equation for the macroscopic stress. The coefficients of the second-order terms scale with the size of the Representative Volume Element (RVE) employed in the homogenisation scheme.