Effective elastic moduli of inhomogeneous solids by embedded cell model

An embedded cell model is presented to obtain the effective elastic moduli for three-dimensional two-phase composites which is an exact analytic formu la without any simplified approximation and can be expressed in an explicit form. For the different cells such as spherical inclusions and cracks surr ounded by sphere and oblate ellipsoidal matrix, the effective elastic modul i are evaluated and the results are compared with those from various microm echanics models. These results show that the present model is direct, simpl e and efficient to deal with three-dimensional tyro-phase composites.