Analytical formulation of 3D dynamic homogenization for periodic elastic systems

Abstract: Homogenization of the equations of motion for a three dimensional periodic elastic system is considered. Expressions are obtained for the fully dynamic effective material parameters governing the spatially averaged fields by using the plane wave expansion (PWE) method. The effective equations are of Willis form (Willis 1997) with coupling between momentum and stress and tensorial inertia. The formulation demonstrates that the Willis equations of elastodynamics are closed under homogenization. The effective material parameters are obtained for arbitrary frequency and wavenumber combinations, including but not restricted to Bloch wave branches for wave propagation in the periodic medium. Numerical examples for a 1D system illustrate the frequency dependence of the parameters on Bloch wave branches and provide a comparison with an alternative dynamic effective medium theory (Shuvalov 2011) which also reduces to Willis form but with different effective moduli.