Contribution to the study of composite materials and their damage

Chapter 1 describes the homogenization techniques used for defining the overall behavior of composite materials for conventional cases of linear and perfectly glued elastic constituents. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on solving the problems inherent in two types of degenerated situations: elastic media with microcavities, and elastic media containing rigid inclusions. Through suitable definitions of deformation concepts and macroscopic stresses it is shown that conventional theory results apply naturally to these limits.