Toughening by Crack Deflection in the Homogenization of Brittle Composites with Soft Inclusions

We present a simple example of a toughening mechanism in the homogenization of composites with soft inclusions, produced by a crack deflection at microscopic level. We show that the mechanism is connected to the irreversibility of the crack process; because of that it cannot be detected through the standard homogenization tool of the \({\Gamma}\)-convergence.