From Lattice Models to Extended Continua

The mechanical behavior of cellular structures is dominated by the underlying micro-topology and therefore has to be denoted very complex. For that reason the question of the computational treatment of such structures is not completely cleared yet. One way to do computations for materials with underlying microstructure is to treat them as homogeneous bodies in the framework of extended continuum theories. These theories consist of an extended set of balance equations, extended kinematic strain measures and extended constitutive equations with additional material parameters. Mostly the physical interpretation of those additional material parameters is not demonstrated vividly. So it is very difficult to quantify them by parameter identification based on experimental reference data.

It will be shown how virtual reference data from microscopic computations can be used to determine the extended set of macroscopic material parameters for the linear Cosserat theory.