Periodic homogenization in thermoviscoelasticity: case of multilayered media with ageing

Conceived as an alternative method to deal with highly heterogeneous composite structures, the homogenization approach developed in this paper is devoted to the formulation of the thermoviscoelastic behavior at the macroscopic level. Attention is focused on composites involving ageing constituents. The concept of strain localization tensor is extended and the memory effects induced by the homogenization process are discussed. The case of multilayered thermoviscoelastic media is examined in the last part of the paper. Taking into account local anisotropic behavior as well as ageing, an explicit formulation is derived for the macroscopic relaxation moduli. An illustrative example is presented where the memory effects are quantified in terms of relaxation times.