A homogenization scheme for viscoplastic composites based on the plane-wave decomposition of constitutive potentials

A homogenization scheme for nonlinear viscoplastic composites is developed on the basis of a plane-wave decomposition of the constitutive potentials and a scalar linearization of the generalized-secant type. Self- consistent predictions for rigidly reinforced blends flowing in accordance with a power law are reported and confronted to similar predictions obtained with a tensorial linearization of the same generalized-secant type. The two sets of predictions are found to agree for weak nonlinearities but to diverge for strong nonlinearities. Implications are discussed.