On the homogenization of a new class of locally periodic microstructures in linear elasticity with residual stress

Many biological and engineering materials have nonperiodic microstructures for which classical periodic homogenization results do not apply. Certain nonperiodic microstructures may be approximated by locally periodic microstructures for which homogenization techniques are available. Motivated by the consideration that such materials are often anisotropic and can possess residual stresses, a broad class of locally periodic microstructures are considered and the resulting effective macroscopic equations are derived. The effective residual stress and effective elasticity tensor are determined by solving unit cell problems at each point in the domain. However, it is found that for a certain class of locally periodic microstructures, solving the unit cell problems at only one point in the domain completely determines the effective elasticity tensor.