Estimate of effective elastic moduli with microcrack interaction effects

A method is developed for estimating the effects of microdefect interaction on the effective elastic properties of heterogeneous solids. An effective medium is defined to calculate the global effective elastic moduli of britt le materials weakened by distributed microcracks. Each microcrack is assume d to be embedded in an effective medium, the compliance of which is obtaine d from the dilute concentration method without accounting for interaction. The present scheme requires no iteration; it can account for microcrack int eraction with sufficient accuracy. Analytical solutions are given for sever al two- and three-dimension problems with and without anisotropy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.