Effective properties of an isotropic solid weakened by micro-cracks located at inter-granular boundaries

This study presents a new methodology for estimating the effective properties of solids containing cracks along the inter-granular boundaries, using analytical developments and numerical simulations. The latter are based on the generation of virtual microstructures of such type obtained by superimposing a Voronoï tessellation modeling the granular network with a random dispersion of overlapping spheres in 3-D, or disks in 2-D, which serve to...