Homogenization of plasticity equations with two-scale convergence methods

Abstract

We investigate the deformation of heterogeneous plastic materials. The model uses internal variables and kinematic hardening, elastic and plastic strain are used in an infinitesimal strain theory. For periodic material properties with periodicity length scale n > 0, we obtain the limiting system as n -> 0. The limiting two-scale plasticity model coincides with well-known effective models. Our direct approach relies on abstract tools from two-scale convergence (regarding convex functionals and monotone operators) and on higher order estimates for solution sequences.