NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF MICROPOLAR ELASTIC PARAMETERS FOR A HETEROGENEOUS MICROSTRUCTURE

Resumo

Materials that, like concrete, possess a heterogeneous microstructure, are characterized by
behaviours at the macroscale that are difficult to be represented with standard continuum descriptions.

Generalized continua models, due to their enriched kinematical description, are well-suited for the repre-
sentation of microstructural effects. The main limitation to the use of generalized models is the presence

of additional material parameters, difficult to be obtained through experiments. The present work deals

with the definition of the two additional parameters of the micropolar continuum theory, using a numer-
ical homogenization strategy. The main aim is, then, to obtain an equivalent micropolar macromedium

starting from a random heterogeneous microstructure. This paper focuses on a homogenization strategy

originally conceived for periodic microstructures, and presents a preliminary investigation on its exten-
sion to randon heterogeneous microstructures. The theoretical aspects are discussed, and some initial

numerical results are presented.