Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

www.elsevier.com/locate/compscitech

Eective elastic properties of 2-D solids with circular holes:

numerical simulations
N. Hu *, B. Wang, G.W. Tan, Z.H. Yao, W.F. Yuan
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Received 8 January 1999; received in revised form 8 January 2000; accepted 8 March 2000

Abstract
In order to evaluate the reliability and precision of the existing approximate micromechanically-based theoretical schemes for the
prediction of the eective elastic properties of a sheet containing holes, numerical simulations have been carried out. The boundaryelement method has been adopted in numerical simulations on account of its numerical precision and other remarkable merits.
First, the relationships between eective elastic properties of 2-D solids with random circular holes and the volume fraction of holes
have been studied. Furthermore, to investigate the inuence of the interaction between holes on the eective material moduli of 2-D
solids, another kind of model with normally distributed holes has been analyzed. By comparing computational results with the
theoretical solutions, the presently existing theoretical methods have been comprehensively evaluated. Furthermore, the eects of
two parameters in the normal distribution function on the eective material moduli have been investigated in detail. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Composite; Micro-mechanics models; C. Elastic properties; Numerical simulation; BEM

1. Introduction
To estimate the eective elastic properties of materials
with inclusions, e.g. holes and micro-cracks, several
micro-mechanics models have been developed. A class
of the most famous micro-mechanics models includes
the composite cylinder model due to Hashin [1], the
dilute or non-interacting solution, the self-consistent
method proposed by Budiansky [2] and Hill [3], the
generalized self-consistent method by Christensen and
Lo [4], Aboudi and Benveniste [5], and Huang et al.
[6,7] and the MoriTanaka method by Mori and
Tanaka [8], Taya and Chou [9], Weng [10] and Benveniste [11].
The dilute or non-interacting solution only considers
the matrix containing a single inclusion, but provides
very simple and closed-form expressions in terms of
Eshelby's tensors [12,13]. In the category which considers the interaction among inclusions, it is well known
that the self-consistent method may overestimate the
* Corresponding author at: c/o Professor Hisao Fukunaga, Tohoku
University, Department of Aeronautics & Space Engineering, Aoba 01
Aramaki, Aoba-Ku, Sendai, 980-8579 Japan.

eect of inclusions. The dierential method does not

exhibit the just mentioned intuitively unacceptable
results of the self-consistent method, however, it may
lead to non-unique solutions unless a lling path is specied [14]. The MoriTanaka method [8] has been
established as a viable means for composite materials
due to its simplicity, and has been widely applied in
various micro-mechanical approaches [911]. The generalized self-consistent method was rst thoroughly
investigated in Ref. [4]. Some other authors [57] extended
this method for materials with multi-phase inclusions
and micro-cracks. Zheng and Du [16] recently proposed
the interaction direction derivation scheme for a threephase model.
Although there are various kinds of theoretical
approaches, only few data obtained from experiments
or numerical simulations in the literature can be found.
To the authors' knowledge about numerical simulations,
for the case of materials containing holes or voids, the
following researches should be mentioned. A numerical
procedure, based on series expansion of complex
potentials, was advocated by Isida and Igawa [17]. Only
several kinds of periodic arrays of holes were considered
in their work [17]. Day et al. [18] utilized the spring

0266-3538/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0266-3538(00)00054-3

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N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

force modeling by considering a sheet containing some

circular holes arranged as triangular and hexagonal arrays.
The model with random circular holes, but probably overlapping each other, was also analyzed. No numerical
simulations about the sheet with random holes, which
do not overlap each other, have been performed.
Furthermore, until now only limited papers carried
out the critical evaluation for the noted class of micromechanics models. One paper by Christensen [15] concerned this work. Although the theoretical check in Ref.
[15] is quite critical from the viewpoint of potential
energy, actually only limited experimental data for particulate-reinforced composites have been employed for
the investigation. The case of the holes as the inclusions
in the matrix has not been discussed [15]. Actually, for
the case of holes, there are obvious dierences in results
obtained from various theoretical approaches when the
volume fraction of holes are high. For instance, the
eective Young's modulus predicted by the Mori
Tanaka method is higher than the result of the generalized self-consistent method, although the bulk moduli
from the two methods are almost the same.
With the previous knowledge in mind, the main object
of this paper includes: (1) to evaluate the eciencies of
the existing theoretical schemes comprehensively by
computing the eective material properties of a sheet
containing random holes; (2) to investigate the interaction among holes by analyzing the sheet with normally
distributed holes. However, only the following micromechanics models, i.e. the composite cylinder model
(CCM), the generalized self-consistent method (GSCM),
the MoriTanaka method (MT) and the interaction
direct derivation (IDD) solution, are considered.

Young's modulus Ex of the material with holes is calculated through straightforward analysis
Ex

 F=A F
L

" d=L A
d

where L is the length of the square sheet, A the section

area of the boundary on which a uniform displacement
d is applied. Also, the same analysis can be used to calculate Ey if the prescribed displacement is applied on
one edge along the y-axis direction.
For computation of the bulk modulus, besides the
edge under the uniform displacement along the x-axis
direction shown in Fig. 1, the top edge of the sheet is
also subjected to uniform displacement along the y-axis
direction. The bottom of the sheet is xed along the yaxis direction. A similar computation procedure as
mentioned above can be used. In two-dimensional cases,
the bulk modulus represents the average variation of
unit area caused by the average hydrostatic tension. The
average hydrostatic tension can be described as
!

T

dS
2
2
1 2 1 L1 T1
dS1

L2
3
0
2
L1
L2
2
where subscripts 1 and 2 denote the edges with prescribed uniform displacement, L1 and L2 represent the
lengths of these two edges, and they are equal to L for
the square sheet employed here.
The area variation after unit surface area deformation
is represented by 

2. Computation of eective moduli

The boundary element method with a special block
solution technique, which is briey explained in the
Appendix, has been employed. In this section, we present a computational analysis of a square sheet with
unit thickness consisting of circular holes. All eective
elastic material properties are computed for plane stress.
For computation of the Young's modulus, as shown
in Fig. 1, the sheet is subjected to uniform displacement
at the x-axis direction. No loads or displacements are
applied on the edge parallel to it. The force required to
cause this displacement is calculated from the tractions
T on the boundary of prescribed displacement condition, that is

T
dS
1
F
d

where d represents the boundary with prescribed uniform displacement. Based on this force, the eective

Fig. 1. Model for numerical computation of the eective Young's

modulus.

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

 "1 "2

d1 d2

L1 L2

Then the bulk modulus for the two-dimensional cases

can be determined as
K

0


After obtaining the eective Young's modulus and

bulk modulus, the eective shear modulus can be
obtained quite easily for two-dimensional cases,
G

KE
4K E

3. Verication of the present numerical analysis

To check our boundary element program, two typical
problems are tested and veried by using the classical
elastic theory and abaqus commercial program.
The rst is a square sheet with a hole at the center
under uniform tension 10 MPa on two opposite edges.
The length of the sheet is 100 mm and the radius of the
hole is 2 mm. The solution of elastic theory is only
available for the innite plate with a hole. Because the
radius of the hole is very small compared with the
length of the plate in our model, the results obtained
from the bem should be near those of the elastic theory.
A quarter of the plate is analyzed. The boundary of the
hole is divided into 4 elements in the bem computation.
Fig. 2 shows that the variation of circumferential stress
 from the bem and elastic theory on the quarter
boundary of the hole. It can be found that the present
numerical results agree with the elastic solution very
well. The maximum error of the bem results is lower
than 0.025%.

Fig. 2. Comparison of the circumferential stress  on the boundary

of the hole obtained from the bem and the elastic theory.

1813

The second is a square sheet containing two identical

holes, which are very close. The Young's modulus and
Poisson's ratio of the plate are 1.0 MPa and 0.3,
respectively. The geometry and prescribed displacement
conditions of this plate are shown in Fig. 3. The corresponding FEM mesh used by abaqus software is shown
in Fig. 4. In the bem computation, the boundary of one
hole is divided into 14, 16 and 18 elements, respectively.
Comparison of the Von-Mises stresses on the boundary
of one hole is plotted in Fig. 5, where  represents the
angle in the anti-clockwise direction from point 1 to
point 3 as shown in Fig. 3. From this gure, it can be
found that the present solutions agree with those
obtained by abaqus very well. However, the results of
the bem are a little higher than those obtained from
abaqus at the region of high stress concentration. It was
also found that 16 elements on the boundary of the
holes are sucient for obtaining the accurate and converged results even at regions of comparatively high
stress concentration.
4. Numerical model and a convergence check
As stated previously, two kinds of numerical models
need to be investigated. One is the sheet with random
distributed holes, another is the sheet with normally
distributed holes. The sheet possesses unit thickness (1
mm), and the in-plane dimension 10001000 mm. The
Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio are 1MPa and 0.3,
respectively. In our practical computation for a sheet
containing random distributed holes, an important step
is to check the convergence of our models. Since the
material may be of anisotropic characteristics when the
number of scattered holes are very few. Hence, a convergence check of the model transforms to nd the

Fig. 3. Two hole model for comparison of the bem and abaqus program.

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N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

Fig. 4. FEM mesh in computation of abaqus program.

Fig. 5. Comparison of the Von-Mises stress on the boundary of a hole

obtained from the bem and abaqus program.

number of holes in the sheet whose macroscopic material

properties tend to be stable. Fig. 6 shows the results of a
convergence check for c 0:2, 0.4 and 0.6, respectively.
In Fig. 6, for one case of the number of holes, three
models are constructed for numerical computation.
From this gure, it can be found that the numerical
results of three models disperse more violently with the
increase of the volume fraction c. This phenomenon has
also been observed by other researchers, e.g. Huang et
al. [7]. However, from this gure, it can be found that
the results tend to be stable when the number of holes is
greater than 100. Also, the deviation among three
models becomes small. Hence, in our following models,
the sheet consists of up to 100 holes. This is a quite large
amount of computation, since one hole is divided into
16 quadratic three-noded elements as shown in the
examples in Section 3 for the guarantee of the accuracy

Fig. 6. Convergence check of the number of holes in numerical models.

of stresses in computation. In our nal computation, the

number of the system equation is over eight thousands.
For the nite-element method, this equation number is
not so frightful due to the sparisity and symmetry of the
system equation. However, as stated in the Appendix,
this is a large-scale computation for the bem.
In our models, the number of holes is kept to be 100.
The volume fraction of holes is adjusted by changing
the radius of the identical holes. The generation of the
random distributed holes is quite arduous and computer
time consuming, especially when the volume fraction of
holes is high. Actually, it needs some tricks to generate

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

the random distributed holes successfully. For ve kinds

of volume fraction of holes, i.e. c 0:2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and
0.6, the corresponding 15 models are generated. For
computation of Ex , Ey and K, actually 45 sets of data
are calculated. The typical three models for c 0:2, 0.4
and 0.6 respectively, are plotted in Fig. 7. By observing
Fig. 7(c), it can be found that there is almost no space
left for inserting a new hole. Theoretically, the maximum volume fraction should be equal to 0.7854 when
the holes of the same size are used. Our generation
program can generate for the case of c 0:69 at most
when we are lucky. For higher volume fraction of holes,
almost no successful example was found.
If it is said that the generation of above random distributed holes is dicult, for the case of normally distributed holes, the generation of models presents to the
analyst a much harder nut to crack. Here, the formation
of the normally distributed holes is explained in detail.
The normal distribution function is selected as


x2
1
7
y Int p e 22  Sh
2
where x represents the shortest distance between a hole
and other holes, y the number of holes whose shortest
distance with other holes is x, Sh is a constant, and 
and  are normal distribution parameters in which 
should be large than 2r (r is the radius of holes).
The shortest distance between one hole and other
holes is chosen in the normal distribution function, since
it is an important index for investigation of the interaction among holes. With the increase of the shortest distance, the interaction among holes should become
stronger. The normal distribution function is shown in
Fig. 8, where  denotes the average shortest distance
among holes and  describes the shape of the normal
distribution function. The area of the normal distribution function is divided into some small parts (see bars
in Fig. 8). Two sides of the distribution function are cut
by ( 2r) to avoid the shortest distance between two

1815

holes are very small to cause the poor computational

accuracy or even overlapping each other. Each bar
denotes the number of holes whose shortest distance of
these holes with other holes are x. By seeing Eq. (7), the
heights of all bars (values on the y-axis) are integer. The
purpose of the generation of the normally distributed
holes is to make the summation of the bars in Fig. 8 be
equal to 100, i.e. the total number of holes in our
numerical model. In this case, Sh in Eq. (7) plays an
important role to adjust the number of holes of all bars.
Our generation program can automatically search for a
value of Sh to make the summation of all bars be equal
to 100.
From Fig. 8, it can also be found that two important
parameters are  and , which determine the distribution
of holes. Five kinds of  are chosen for investigation of
the eect of the average shortest distance on the macroscopic material moduli, which are  88, 89, 90, 91
and 92 mm, respectively. With the increase of  the
holes are distributed more equably in the sheet. Further,
three kinds of models on condition of  88 mm are
selected to analyze the inuence of the parameter ,
which are  0:25, 0.20, 0.15, respectively. With the
decrease of , the shortest distances of holes become

Fig. 8. Normal distribution function.

Fig. 7. Typical models with random distributed holes when c 0:2, 0.4 and 0.6.

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N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

concentrated around the average value, i.e. . Due to a

large amount of computation, only three cases of the
volume fraction are investigated, i.e. c 0:2, 0.4, 0.6,
respectively. For one case of ,  and c, three independently generated models are built. In this case, the
number of total independent models is 63. However, for
computation of Ex , Ey and K, respectively, in fact 189
sets of data are calculated, which are tremendous
amount of computation.
5. Results and discussions
5.1. Results of random distributed holes
First, the present numerical results of the random
distributed holes are checked using the pre-existing
numerical solutions [17,18]. As stated previously, until
now, no computation was carried out for no-overlapped
random holes on real meaning. The rst candidate used
for comparison is the results of Isida and Igawa [17].
They employed the assumed complex stress potentials in
the form of Laurent series expansions to analyze the zigzag array of circular holes in an innite solid under
uniaxial tension. They computed the eective Young's
modulus when the volume fraction of holes is controlled
under 0.5 and obtained the power series tted from the
results. Two obtained power series for square and triangular arrays are used here. The results of Day et al.
[18] are also employed for comparison. They set up
three models: (a) periodically centered circular holes on
a honeycomb lattice, (b) periodically centered circular
holes on a triangular lattice, and (c) random centered
circular holes. In the rst two cases, there is no overlapping between circles. In case (c), there is no restriction on the overlapping of circles. Day et al. admitted
that they have avoided the interesting case of random
circles that cannot overlap, as the geometry is somewhat
more complex to generate [18]. This case is just the
model used in this paper. They nally employed a spring
network having force constants that model the elastic
properties of the original continuum material.
Fig. 9 shows the comparison between our eective
Young's modulus and those of Isida and Igawa [17] and
Day et al. [18]. Our results of Ex and Ey are obtained
from the average values of three independent models.
From this gure, it can be found that our results are just
located between the results of the triangular and square
arrays obtained by Isida and Igawa [17]. Also, it can be
identied that our average values of Ex and Ey are
almost identical, which reveals that the present models
possess quite good convergence and isotropy. From Fig.
9, it can be observed that our results are very close to
those of the hexagonal and triangular arrays obtained
by Day et al. [18] When the volume fraction is higher
than 0.6, the results of the hexagonal array of Day et

Fig. 9. Comparison of the eective Young's modulus obtained from

the bem and those obtained by Isida and Igawa [17] and Day et al.
[18].

al.[18] is zero and probably physically impossible. In

fact, only triangular arrays may represent the isotropy
on the physical meaning. The results of the overlapped
holes [18] are much lower than the other three solutions.
Although Day et al. [18] did not provide the numerical results for the bulk and shear moduli, they gave out
the results of Poisson's ratio of composites, which can
be used to calculate the eective bulk and shear moduli
by employing the eective Young's modulus simultaneously. The Poisson's ratio of the matrix is 0.33 in their
computation. From the comparison of our eective
bulk modulus with those obtained by Day et al. [18], it
was found that our results are very near the numerical
results in Ref. [18] for triangular and hexagonal arrays.
Also, the comparison of the shear modulus shows that
the present results are near, but a little lower than the
numerical results of triangular arrays [18].
An important phenomenon is that the present results
of random distributed holes are a little lower than the
results of the triangular arrays [17,18] (see Fig. 9), but
probably higher than other kinds of arrays in some
cases. Through the above comparisons, the present
results can be employed to evaluate the existing theoretical approaches. The eective Young's modulus is illustrated in Fig. 10, where the present numerical results
including Ex and Ey of three models are annotated in
the shadowed box. From this gure, it can be observed
that the present results agree with those obtained by the
GCSM and CCM approaches very well at dierent
volume fractions. The MT and IDD schemes obviously
over-predict the results obtained from the present
numerical technique, the GCSM and CMM approaches. Only on the low level of the volume fraction, the
results from the MT and IDD theories are close to
other three kinds of results.
The results of the bulk modulus are plotted in Fig. 11.
From this gure, however, it can be observed surprisingly that the bulk modulus from the bem is lower than

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

all theoretical solutions, especially when the volume

fraction of holes is high. Also, the results of three
numerical models are quite near at the dierent volume
fraction levels, by comparing with those of Ex and Ey in
Fig. 10 intuitively. This means that the present results of
the eective bulk modulus have very good convergence.
Actually, the theorists [15] previously have not stressed
the bulk modulus, since it is relatively simple to be
obtained and most of theoretical approaches provide
the same results.
By using the above results, i.e. the average value of Ex
and Ey and the bulk modulus in three models, the shear
modulus can be easily obtained from Eq. (6). Fig. 12
shows the comparison of the shear moduli of dierent
approaches. It can be seen that the shear modulus from
the bem is very close to the GSCM and CCM solutions.
However, the MT and IDD solutions are obviously
higher than other three solutions. This phenomenon
implies that the MT and IDD solutions may underestimate the interaction among holes.

Fig. 10. Comparison of the eective Young's modulus obtained from

the bem and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes for the
models with random distributed holes.

Fig. 11. Comparison of the eective bulk modulus obtained from the
bem and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes for the models with random distributed holes.

1817

5.2. Results of normally distributed holes

The results of the sheet with normally distributed
holes are displayed and discussed in the following.
5.2.1. Inuence of normal distribution parameter m
To investigate the eect of the average shortest distance  on the eective elastic properties, another
parameter  is xed to be 0.25. For three values of ,
the corresponding results of the Young's modulus are
demonstrated in Fig. 13. From this gure, it can also be
found that the GSCM and CCM can produce more
reasonable results than the MT and IDD schemes.
Also, with the increase of , the results of three models
are more concentrated when c 0:6, since the holes are
distributed more equably. The average values of Ex and
Ey in three models, which are normalized by the mean
value of these average values at dierent values of , are
shown in Fig. 14. In this gure, the average shortest
distance  denotes the x-axis, which is normalized by
the length of the square plate. With the increase of  the
increase of the eective Young's modulus can be identied from this gure. Especially when volume fraction
c 0:6, this increase is quite signicant. This phenomenon is quite reasonable, since interaction between two
holes depends not only on the average shortest distance
, but also on the radius of hole which is completely
determined by the volume fraction c in our case. However, another interesting phenomenon is that the
increase of the Young's modulus is not monotonic with
the increase of . When  increases from 88 to 89 mm,
there is an obvious drop for c 0:6. To ascertain this
phenomenon, a sampling point of  88:5 mm is also
calculated and the results are drawn in Fig. 14. It can be
found that the decreasing tendency can be identied. To
reveal this phenomenon more clearly, a triangular array of
circular holes in an innite solid subject to tension is considered in Fig. 15. When the distance d is not equal e, the
macroscopic material is orthogonal. To solve this problem,

Fig. 12. Comparison of the eective shear modulus obtained from the
bem and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes for the models with random distributed holes.

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N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

the rectangular portion of ABCDE is selected. The stress

function is chosen as that put forward by Slot [19]
F a0 log r b0 r2
X

an rn2 bn rn cn rn dn rn2 cos n

Then, there are 4n 2 unknown coecients. From

the expression, the stress components r ,  and r can
be obtained, and the displacement components ur and
u can be derived. By using the collocation method, the
displacement on the edge ED can be calculated, which

where n is equal to 11, and chosen as 2, 4, 6,. . .. . ., 22.

Fig. 14. Normalized average values of the eective Young's modulus

vs. .

Fig. 15. Periodic triangular array of circular holes in an innite solid

subjected to tension.

Fig. 13. Comparison of the eective Young's modulus obtained from

the bem for the models with normally distributed holes and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes.

Fig. 16. Eective Young's modulus vs. d=e.

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

can be used to compute the eective Young's modulus.

In this procedure, the corresponding conditions on the
dierent boundaries of the rectangular should be set up.
First, the hole edge AB must be traction free, there are
2n 1 equations. Second, the resultant force on the
edge BC along the load direction, which should be equal
to   d, leads to 1 equation. Third, the stress state is
symmetric about the CD edge, that is xy 0:0 and
u constant. On this edge, there are n 2 collocation

1819

points, which leads to n 1 equations. Fourth, on the

ED edge, the stress states and displacements of two
points, which are located on both sides of the center of
this edge and of the same distance to the center, should
be the same. On this edge, there are n 2 collocation
points, which leads to n 1 equations. Using the above
conditions, a series of linear algebra equations can be
set up and solved. The convergence check was carried
out, it was found that n 11 is enough for obtaining
accurate results. Also, the obtained results have been
veried by using the results obtained by Isida and Igawa
[17] from the complex stress potentials. Finally, the
eective Young's moduli of the dierent volume fractions vs. d=e are shown in Fig. 16. This gure reveals
clearly that, with the increase of d (if e is xed), the
eective Young's modulus also increases when d=e is
larger than 1.0. However, when d=e is smaller than 1.0,
the eective Young's modulus drops with the increase
of d. The variation of the Young's modulus is almost
the same as that shown in Fig. 14. This theoretical
solutions can provide the proof for the eectiveness of
our numerical results. Actually, this phenomenon can
also be identied from other solutions about the stress
concentration of multi-hole plate, such as illustrated by
Nishida [20]. Naturally, it should be pointed out that
the situation shown in Fig. 15 is a little dierent from
our case. In our case, the distance between a hole and
other holes is measured from the arbitrary direction
around the candidate hole, but the distance changes
only along the vertical direction of the load direction in
Fig. 15. The numerical results in Fig. 14 can be tted
into a function of c and  as follows
E E0 A

E0 
q
25 7:0756=c 4000=L 0:0872

where A is expressed as
A 1:49869 1:72617c0:38612

Fig. 17. Comparison of the eective bulk modulus obtained from the
bem for the models with normally distributed holes and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes.

10

Fig. 18. Normalized average values of the eective bulk modulus vs. .

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N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

For the bulk modulus, the numerical results are plotted in Fig. 17 for  88, 90 and 92 mm, respectively.
The average values of K in three models, which are
normalized by the mean value of these average values at
dierent values of , are shown in Fig. 18, which illustrates that there is a increasing trend in the bulk modulus
with the increase of . This phenomenon can be
explained from that the interaction among holes
becomes weaker when  increases. Furthermore, unlike

the Young's modulus in Fig. 14, it can be found that the

bulk modulus increases monotonically with the increase
of . In this case, it is quite dicult to prove this trend
from the above elastic theory for the orthogonal material shown in Fig. 15. Our numerical simulation results
can be tted into the following formulation
K K0 B

0:726K0
0:0882 2

106 4=L

11

where B and  are expressed as

B 1:11389 1:30186c0:55418

12a

 0:0202 0:0475c 0:0325c2

12b

The calculated shear moduli are demonstrated in Fig.

19 for  88, 90 and 92 mm, respectively. The average
values of G in three models, which are normalized by
the mean value of these average values at dierent
values of , are shown in Fig. 20. In this gure, it can be
found that the shear modulus increases with the increase
of  when =L is larger than 0.089, however it decreases
with the increase of  when =L is smaller than 0.089.
This trend is similar to that of the eective Young's
modulus in Fig. 14. The following formulation can be
obtained by using the our calculated results
G E=

13

where E is described in Eq. (9) and  is expressed as

follows
 2:61962 2:28777c2:68517

14

5.2.2. Inuence of normal distribution parameter s

When  88 mm, three values of  have been investigated, which are 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25, respectively. To
investigate the inuence of  on the Young's modulus,
for brevity, the average values of Ex and Ey in three

Fig. 19. Comparison of the eective shear modulus obtained from the
bem for the models with normally distributed holes and those predicted by dierent theoretical schemes.

Fig. 20. Normalized average values of the eective shear modulus vs.
.

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

models, which are normalized by the mean value of

these average values at dierent values of  are directly
shown in Fig. 21(a). From this gure, it can be found
that, unlike Fig. 14 for , the variation in the Young's
modulus is not in a regular pattern when  increases.
When  increases, the number of holes of small shortest
distance decreases, however, the number of holes of
large shortest distance also decreases. Their eects may
counteract each other. Hence, it can be said that there is
no obvious inuence of  on the Young's modulus.
Fig. 21(b) shows that the inuence of  on the bulk
modulus. From this gure, it can be found that there is
no clear and obvious trend when c 0:4, although the

1821

bulk modulus decreases with the increase of  when

c 0:6. Fig. 21(c) also shows that, for the eective
shear modulus, there is no clear varying trend in the
calculated results with the increase of . Therefore,
unlike the variation of , it can be pointed out that
there is no signicant inuence on the eective material
properties when  varies.
6. Conclusions
The numerical technique (bem) is employed to investigate the macroscopic material properties of the 2-D
solids containing circular holes. Two kinds of models,
which include random distributed holes and normally
distributed holes, are calculated. The pre-existing theoretical models are evaluated through the obtained
numerical results. The following conclusions can be
drawn:
1. The eective material properties obtained from the
numerical computations of the random distributed
holes are usually lower than the results of the triangular array, but higher than the results of the
square array.
2. For the Young's modulus and shear modulus, the
GSCM and CCM schemes can give out more
accurate and reasonable results than that provided
by the MT and IDD schemes. The results
obtained by the MT and IDD methods are higher
than the results of the numerical simulation and
the GSCM and CCM schemes. Therefore, the M
T and IDD methods may under-predict the interaction among holes.
3. For the bulk modulus, all theoretical solutions
over-predict the numerical solutions when the
volume fraction of holes is high.
4. For the normally distributed holes, the eective
elastic properties, especially the bulk modulus,
become higher as the average shortest distance 
among holes increases. However, this increase may
not be monotonic for the Young's modulus and
shear modulus. The shape parameter  of normal
distribution function has no signicant inuence
on the eective material properties.
Appendix

Fig. 21. Normalized average values of the eective Young's modulus,

the eective bulk modulus and the eective shear modulus vs. .

In this study, the boundary element method is

employed due to its higher accuracy and simple mesh
discretization. However, the main drawback of this
method is that its system matrix is unsymmetrical and
fully lled with non-zero components. In our numerical
models, the total number of degree-of-freedoms is about
8000, which needs CPU memory of 500 Mbyte to contain

N. Hu et al. / Composites Science and Technology 60 (2000) 18111823

the right-hand side matrix only. This requirement

exceeds obviously the usual computers' ability except
for some super-computers. Hence, to carry out our
numerical simulations, an out-of-core solution technique is designed.
For plane elastic problems, the boundary integral
equation is

clk xuk x ulk x; ypk x uk xplk x; yd

1a

where x denotes a source point on the boundary, y the

eld point on the boundary, ulk and plk are the fundamental solutions of the elastic plane problems. The
coecient clk x depends on the boundary shape on x
point.
The three-noded quadratic elements are employed. By
collocating the above boundary integral equation, a
system of linear equations can be represented symbolically as
HU GT

2a

After transforming the unknown components in the

displacement vector U and traction vector T to the lefthand side, and the known components to the right-hand
side, the following linear algebra equation can be
obtained
AX B

3a

The following out-of core solution technique is proposed to solve the linear equation.
At rst, the above equation can be divided into submatrices or blocks as follows
9 8
9
2
38
X1 > > B1 >
A11 A12 . . . A1m >
>
>
>
>
6 A21 A22 . . . A2m 7< X2 = < B2 =
6
7 .
4a
..
4 ...
. >>
. . . . . . . . . 5>
>
>
; >
;
: . >
: . >
Am1 Am2 . . . Amm
Xm
Bm
where Aij is the sub-matrix of matrix A, m the number
of sub-matrices in one row, and Xi and Bi are the subvectors of the unknown and known vectors X and B,
respectively.
To start with, the rst row and any another row of the
matrix are brought into the work area, i.e. CPU memory, from the hard disk,
9
8
X1 >
>

>
=  
< X2 >
B1
A11 A12 . . . A1m

5a
..
Ai1 Ai2 . . . Aim >
Bi
>
>
;
: . >
Xm
Performing the Gauss elimination in the 2nd row
using the 1st row of the above equation

1
A1
ij Aij Ai1 A11 A1j j 1; 2; . . . ; m

6a

The corresponding right-hand side vector Bi is also

proceeded as
1
B1
i Bi Ai1 A11 B1

7a

Then saving the above results on the hard disk and

performing the above computation iteratively for
i 2  m, Eq. (4.a) becomes the following form
2
3
A11 A12 . . . A1m 8 X 9 8 B 9
>
1 >
1 >
>
> 1
>
6..............................7>
= >
=
< X2 >
< B2 >
6
7
1
1 7
6 0

8a
.
A
.
.
.
A
.
6
22
2m 7
. > >
.. >
>
>
4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 5>
; >
>
: . >
>
: 1 ;
Xm
1
Bm
0 A1
m2 . . . Amm

..................

1822

By performing the above elimination procedure

repeatedly to the sub-matrices under the dotted lines in
Eq. (8a), nally we can get an upper triangular blockmatrix as
9 8 B 9
2
38
X1 > >
1 >
A1m >
A11 A12 . . .
>
> 1
= >
=
< X2 >
< B2 >
1 7>
6 0 A1
.
.
.
A
22
2m 7
6

9a
.
.
4 ... ... ...
. . . 5>
> .. >
>
> .. >
; >
>
> m1 >
m1 :
;
:
0
0
. . . Amm
Xm
Bm
After the elimination process, the next and nal stage of
solution is the corresponding back-substitution of the submatrix equations. This process can be expressed as follows
Xi Aiii11 Bii1

m
X
ki1

i1
Aik
Xk i m; m 1; m 2; . . . ; 1

10a

where Ai1
should be imported from the hard-disk into
ik
work area row-by-row. This process is continued up to
the rst row and all unknowns in X are then calculated.,
and the solution is complete.
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