A Bridging Mechanism in the Homogenization of Brittle Composites with Soft Inclusions

We provide a homogenisation result for the energy-functional associated with a purely brittle composite whose microstructure is characterised by soft periodic inclusions embedded in a stiffer matrix. We show that the two constituents as above can be suitably arranged on a microscopic scale ε to obtain, in the limit as ε tends to zero, a homogeneous macroscopic energy-functional explicitly depending on the opening of the crack.