Homogenization of periodic elastic composites and locally resonant sonic materials

A method for homogenization of an elastic composite with periodic microstructure is presented, focusing on the Floquet-type elastic waves. The resulting homogenized frequency-dependent elasticity and mass density then automatically satisfy the overall conservation laws and by necessity produce the exact dispersion relations. It is also shown that the dispersion relations and the associated field quantities can be accurately calculated using a mixed variational approach, based on the microstructure of the associated unit cell. The method is used to calculate the dynamic effective parameters for a layered composite by using both the exact solution and the results of the mixed variational formulation. The exact and approximate results are shown to be in close agreement, which makes it possible to use the approximate method for the proposed type of homogenization in cases where an exact solution does not exist. The homogenized frequency-dependent effective parameters give rise to the concept of dynamic Ashby charts that can be used to illustrate the effect of the microstructural architecture on the dynamic properties of a composite. In particular, the charts vividly display how this effective stiffness and density vary with frequency and may attain negative values within certain frequency ranges which can be changed as desired using the microarchitecture while keeping the volume fraction of the unit cell’s constituents constant.