On transformation strains and uniform fields in multiphase elastic media

Abstract

The effect of local eigenstrain and eigenstress fields, or transformation fields, on the local strains and stresses is explored in multiphase elastic solids of arbitrary geometry and material symmetry. The residual local fields caused by such transformation fields are sought in terms of certain transformation influence functions and transformation concentration factor tensors. General properties of these functions and concentration factors, and their relation to the analogous mechanical influence functions and concentration factors, are established, in part, with the help of uniform strain fields in multiphase media. Specific estimates of the transformation concentration factor tensors are evaluated by the self-consistent and Mori-Tanaka methods. It is found here that although the two methods use different constraint tensors in solutions of the respective dilute problems, their estimates of the mechanical, thermal, and transformation concentration factor tensors, and of the overall stiffness of multiphase media have a similar structure. Proofs that guarantee that these methods comply with the general properties of the transformation influence functions, and provide diagonally symmetric estimates of the overall elastic stiffness, are given for two-phase and multiphase systems consisting of, or reinforced by, inclusions of similar shape and alignment. One of the possible applications of the results, in analysis of overall instantaneous properties and local fields in inelastic composite materials, is described in the following paper.