Mechanical interaction between spherical inhomogeneities: an assessment of a method based on the equivalent inclusion

This paper assesses the ability of the Equivalent Inclusion Method (EIM) with third order truncated Taylor series (Moschovidis and Mura, 1975) to describe the stress distributions of interacting inhomogeneities. The cases considered are two identical spherical voids and glass or rubber inhomogeneities in an infinite elastic matrix. Results are compared with those obtained using spherical dipolar coordinates, which are assumed to be exact, and by a Finite Element Analysis. The EIM gives better results for voids than for inhomogeneities stiffer than the matrix. In the case of rubber inhomogeneities, while the EIM gives accurate values of the hydrostatic pressure inside the rubber, the stress concentrations are inaccurate at very small neighbouring distances for all stiffnesses. A parameter based on the residual stress discontinuity at the interface is proposed to evaluate the quality of the solution given by the EIM. Finally, for inhomogeneities stiffer than the matrix, the method is found to diverge for expansions in Taylor series truncated at the third order.