Plane stress plasticity in periodic composites

In this paper a homogenised constitutive relation for the global behaviour of periodic composite structures is derived in the case of elasto-plastic m aterial components. In principle, the representative volume element could b e affected by any kind of non-linear material behaviour respecting the comp lementarity rule, therefore special emphasis is put on the description of t he generality of the algorithm. The method is currently restricted to small strains, plane problems and monotonic proportional loading conditions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.