Abstract of the paper ``Theory of elastic properties of composite materials''
A new method of estimating effective macroscopic elastic constants for
microscopically inhomogeneous materials is formulated using elastic-wave
scattering theory.
The self-consistent medium is determined by the condition that the
scattered long-wavelength displacement field must vanish on the average.
The resulting formulas are simpler to apply than previous methods due to
the reduction from tensor to vector equations. Our formulas are
automatically symmetric under interchange of constituent labels whereas
some other ``self-consistent'' formulations for needle and disk
inclusions do not possess this property. For spherical inclusions, the
standard self-consistent elastic constants are reproduced.
Electronic copies of this paper are not available.