Apparent stiffness tensors for porous solids using symmetric Galerkin boundary elements

Abstract

Representative volume elements (RVEs) from porous or cellular solids can often be too large for numerical or experimental determination of effective elastic constants. Volume elements which are smaller than the RVE can be useful in extracting apparent elastic stiffness tensors which provide bounds on the homogenized elastic stiffness tensor. Here, we make efficient use of boundary element analysis to compute the volume averages of stress and strain needed for such an analysis. For boundary conditions which satisfy the Hill criterion, we demonstrate the extraction of apparent elastic stiffness tensors using a symmetric Galerkin boundary element method. We apply the analysis method to two examples of a porous ceramic. Finally, we extract the eigenvalues of the fabric tensor for the example problem and provide predictions on the apparent elastic stiffnesses as a function of solid volume fraction.