Bounds and perturbation series for incompressible elastic composites with transverse isotropic symmetry

The effective elastic behavior of a transversely isotropic composite made from two incompressible elastic materials is examined. The set of all effective elasticity tensors for transversely isotropic finite rank laminar microstructures is described. The extremal property of this class of microstructures is used to derive a new more precise characterization of the set of effective shear moduli. The perturbation series for the effective elasticity tensor is considered. An explicit formula for the second order perturbation tensor is derived. We describe precisely the set of tensors that correspond to all second order perturbations consistent with transverse isotropy. We apply analytic methods [cf. 27] to show that all second order perturbation tensors are realized by finite rank laminar microstructures. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers