A physically meaningful homogenization approach to determine equivalent elastic properties of layered soil

A simple, yet physically meaningful, homogenization approach to determine â equivalentâ elastic properties for a layered medium is proposed. The proposed approach makes use of the Reuss and Voigt approximations without employing auxiliary stresses and strains related to the different elastic properties of the material layers. When assuming the constituent materials are isotropic, some special features of the equivalent homogeneous medium are discussed for special cases in which all layers have either the same Poisson's ratio, or the elastic modulus, or the shear modulus. A methodology to determine the equivalent anisotropic elastic properties of multilayered soils is proposed, in which all required quantities are physically meaningful and can be determined directly. The applicability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through tests on two types of soils, one of which has varved structure while the other is isotropic.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author