Homogenization methods and mechanics of generalized continua - part 2

The need for generalized continua arises in several areas of the mechanics of heterogeneous materials, especially in homogenization theory. A generalized homogeneous substitution medium is necessary at the global level when the structure made of a composite material is subjected to strong variations of the mean fields or when the intrinsic lengths of non-classical constituents are comparable to the wavelength of variation of the mean fields. In the present work, a systematic method based on polynomial expansions is used to replace a classical composite material by Cosserat and micromorphic equivalent ones. In a second part, a mixture of micromorphic constituents is homogenized using the multiscale asymptotic method. The resulting macroscopic medium is shown to be a Cauchy, Cosserat, microstrain or a full micromorphic continuum, depending on the hierarchy of the characteristic lengths of the problem.