Multiphase composites with extremal bulk modulus

This paper is devoted to the analytical and numerical study of isotropic elastic composites made of three or more isotropic phases. The ranges of their effective bulk and shear moduli are restricted by the Hashin-Shtrikman-Walpole (HSW) bounds. For two-phase composites, these bounds are attainable, that is, there exist composites with extreme bulk and shear moduli. For multiphase composites, they may or may not be attainable depending on phase moduli and volume fractions. Sufficient conditions of attainability of the bounds and various previously known and new types of optimal composites are described. Most of our new results are related to the two-dimensional problem. A numerical topology optimization procedure that solves the inverse homogenization problem is adopted and used to look for two-dimensional three-phase composites with a maximal effective bulk modulus. For the combination of parameters where the HSW bound is known to be attainable, new microstructures are found numerically that possess bulk moduli close to the bound. Moreover, new types of microstructures with bulk moduli close to the bound are found numerically for the situations where the aforementioned attainability conditions are not met. Based on the numerical results, several new types of structures that possess extremal bulk modulus are suggested and studied analytically. The bulk moduli of the new structures are either equal to the HSW bound or higher than the bulk modulus of any other known composite with the same phase moduli and volume fractions. It is proved that the HSW bound is attainable in a much wider range than it was previously believed. Results are readily applied to two-dimensional three-phase isotropic conducting composites with extremal conductivity. They can also be used to study transversely isotropic three-dimensional three-phase composites with cylindrical inclusions of arbitrary cross-sections (plane strain problem) or transversely isotropic thin plates (plane stress or bending of plates problems). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.