Characterization of heterogeneous materials under shear loading at finite strain

This article presents a homogenization procedure to predict the effective shear response of heterogeneous materials at large deformation. Assuming local periodicity, heterogeneous microstructure is identified by a representative volume element that is subjected to an equivalent macroscopic deformation field. The energy balance and periodicity conditions are considered to relate macro and micro-stress fields. Based on the symmetrical planes of the microstructure and local periodicity, it is shown that the analysis of one-quarter of three-dimensional representative volume element is enough to evaluate the effective shear response at finite deformation. A computational method is subsequently developed to obtain the shear response of heterogeneous microstructures. The homogenization procedure is implemented to evaluate shear response of two specific heterogeneous materials, elastomeric composite and reinforced viscoelastic fluid. The performance is successfully verified by comparison of the deformation in the macroscopic level to the response of a homogenized cell.