Asymptotic analysis and boundary homogenization in linear elasticity

We describe the asymptotic behaviour of the solution of a linear elastic pr oblem posed in a domain of R-3, with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditi ons imposed on small zones of size less than epsilon distributed on the bou ndary of this domain, when the parameter epsilon goes to 0. We use epi-conv ergence arguments in order to establish this asymptotic behaviour. We then specialize this general situation to the case of identical strips of size r (epsilon) epsilon-periodically distributed on the lateral surface of an axi symmetric body. We exhibit a critical size of the strips through the limit of the non-negative quantity - 1/(epsilon ln r(epsilon)) and we identify th e different limit problems according to the values of this limit. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.