Effective properties of cellular materials

This paper considers the effective properties of cellular materials. The pr esent approach and some earlier proposed methods are compared and discussed . The main effort is placed upon the continuum mechanics approaches' abilit y to predict effective elastic properties. It is shown that two methods are distinctly better, namely a slight modification of the Mori-Tanaka approac h and a new approach by Dvorak and Srinivas, which is shown to predict the Young's modulus and shear modulus of the Divinycell H-grade PVC foam almost exactly.