A general boundary layer corrector for the asymptotic homogenization of elastic linear composite structures

Abstract

Asymptotic homogenization method is often used in multiscale analysis of periodic structures instead of conducting a full field heterogeneous analysis, in order to achieve computational feasibility and efficiency. When completed with a relocalization process, this method may provide relevant estimates to microscale fields within the material. Nevertheless, the construction of a solution near the boundaries remains beyond the capabilities of classical relocalization schemes due to the loss of periodicity in the vicinity of the boundaries. This paper proposes a post-processing scheme in order to conduct the relocalization step within a finite element framework for periodic linear elastic composite materials. It also assesses the boundary layer effect and a new general method, effective for various boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann or mixed), is proposed based on the idea of computing corrective terms as solution of auxiliary problems on the unit-cell. These terms are finally added to the usual fields obtained from the relocalization process to obtain the corrected solution near the boundaries. The efficiency, accuracy and limitation of the proposed approach are studied on various numerical examples.