New estimates for macroscopic elastic moduli of random polycrystalline aggregates

Abstract

Elastic behaviour of random polycrystals, the shape and crystalline orientations of the constituent grains of which are uncorrelated, is considered. A geometrical restriction in earlier derived bounds on the aggregates’ elastic moduli is released leading to new estimates for the general random aggregates. The bounds are expected to predict the scatter ranges for the observed macroscopic moduli. Application to a number of cubic crystals’ aggregates indicates that their moduli are determinable within the accuracy of up to 2 or 3 significant digits in most cases.