SOME ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS ON THE HOMOGENIZATION METHOD

Effective properties and local stress variations of elastic fiber comp osites are studied by means of the homogenization method. Two differen t methods, ''the displacement method'' and ''the force method'', for s olving the so called cell problem are derived, applied and compared. N umerical results for three different types of representative volume el ements are presented. We also calculate the effective moduli of a unid irectional fiber composite for different volume fractions of fibers. T he numerical results are discussed and compared with the Hashin-Shtrik man bounds.