Determination of the macroscopic strength criterion of a porous medium by nonlinear homogenization

A porous medium, which matrix is a perfectly plastic solid, is considered. This paper proposes a method to determine the macroscopic admissible stress states. The method is based on a homogenization technique which takes advantage of the equivalence, under certain conditions, between a problem of limit analysis and a ficticious nonlinear elastic problem. The particular case of a Drucker-Prager solid matrix is considered. The method provides an analytical expression for the complete macroscopic strength criterion. (C) 2003 Academie des sciences/Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.