Macroscopic damage in periodic composite materials

In this paper a simple way to describe the effects of microscopic damage on the global behaviour of periodic composite materials is shown. The microsc opic damage is interpreted as a local reduction in material stiffness as pr esented in Zohdi et al. [1]. Choosing the damage parameters in an opportune manner a great variety of different damage constitutive laws can be studie d. The macroscopic constitutive law for damaged periodic composites is obta ined with a homogenization procedure described in Pellegrino et al. [2]. A comparison between the results of homogeneous and heterogeneous constitutiv e models is shown. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.