Effective Elastic Properties of Porous Materials With Randomly Dispersed Pores: Finite Deformation

Abstract

A method is developed for the analysis of the effective properties of porous nonlinear elastic materials with randomly distributed interacting pores under finite deformations. The method is based on the solution of the problems of nonlinear elasticity for a representative region using Signorini’s expansion. The constitutive equations for the matrix material and for the comparison material are written in a form corresponding to Murnaghan’s potential. The technique, which is used for ensemble averaging, approximately simulates the uniform distribution of pores. The computations are performed for plane strain, when pores are equal in size, and a circular cylindrical shape in the undeformed state is assumed. [S0021-8936(00)01802-X]