Micromechanics of Random Heterogeneous Materials: New Background, Opportunities and Prospects

Abstract

One considers a linear heterogeneous media (e.g. filtration in porous media, composite materials, CMs, nanocomposites, peristatic CMs, and rough contacted surfaces). The idea of the effective field hypothesis (EFH, H1, see for references and details [1], [2]) dates back to Mossotti (1850) who pioneered the introduction of the effective field concept as a local homogeneous field acting on the inclusions and differing from the applied macroscopic one. It is proved that a concept of the EFH (even if this term is not mentioned) is a (first) background of all four groups of analytical methods in physics and mechanics of heterogeneous media (model methods, perturbation methods, self-consistent methods, and variational ones, see for refs. [1]). An operator form of the general integral equations (GIEs) is obtained which connects the driving fields and fluxes in a point being considered. Either the volume integral equations or boundary ones are used for these GIEs, new concept of the interface polarisation tensors are introduced. New GIEs present in fact the new (second) background (which does not use the EFH) of multi-scale analysis offering the opportunities for a fundamental jump in multiscale research of random heterogeneous media with drastically improved accuracy of local field estimations (with possible change of sign of predicted local fields).