A micromechanical iterative approach for the behavior of polydispersed composites

In this paper, an iterative homogenization method is proposed in order to predict the behavior of polydispersed materials. Various families of heterogeneities according to their geometrical or mechanical properties are progressively introduced into a volume of matrix. At each step, the behavior of intermediate medium is obtained by any analytical homogenization method and is used as matrix of the following step. All homogenization methods, like dilute strain or stress approximations, Hashin’s bounds, three phases method, Mori–Tanaka’s approach or for example the N-layered inclusions method lead to the same effective behavior for the polydispersed material after convergence of the iterative process. Moreover, this convergence is obtained even for significant fractions of heterogeneities and for highly contrasted or polydispersed materials. This method is applied to various composites and validated by comparison with other modellings and experimental results.