Effective Local Properties for Modelling of Functionally Graded Composite Materials

A brief survey is presented of recently developed techniques for estimating overall elastic stiffness of statistically homogeneous multiphase solids subjected to large stress gradients. The stiffness estimates, based on linearly varying fields, provide local properties for a finite element analysis of functionally graded composite materials. Comparisons with selected experiments are encouraging, however, significant differences in local fields and overall response are found in comparisons with predictions obtained from standard homogenization techniques.