The modelling of natural fibre-reinforced composites using a multi-scale methodology

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-85).A multi-scale methodology for small strain linear elasticity is presented in this thesis. The homogenisation process is discussed in general, with particular attention to the required boundary constraints on the micro-domain and the extraction of an effective elastic modulus. For the case of a non-linear problem the enforcement of the required boundary constraints becomes non-trivial and thus implementation via the penalty method and lagrange multipliers is investigated