Periodic rhomboidal cells for symmetry-preserving homogenization and isotropic metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that periodic arrangements of inclusions based on rhomboidal cells can preserve material symmetry, enabling the design of effectively isotropic composites with periodic microstructures.

Contribution

It proves that rhomboidal cell arrangements based on Face-Centered Cubic lattices preserve any constituent material symmetry, facilitating isotropic homogenization in periodic composites.

Findings

Rhomboidal cell arrangements preserve material symmetry.

Spherical inclusions in isotropic matrices produce isotropic composites.

Periodic microstructures can achieve effective isotropy.

Abstract

In the design and analysis of composite materials based on periodic arrangements of sub-units it is of paramount importance to control the emergent material symmetry in relation to the elastic response. The target material symmetry plays also an important role in additive manufacturing. In numerous applications it would be useful to obtain effectively isotropic materials. While these typically emerge from a random microstructure, it is not obvious how to achieve isotropy with a periodic order. We prove that arrangements of inclusions based on a rhomboidal cell that generates the Face-Centered Cubic lattice do in fact preserve any material symmetry of the constituents, so that spherical inclusions of isotropic materials in an isotropic matrix produce effectively isotropic composites.