The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

An Analysis of Strong Discontinuities in Multiplicative Finite Strain Plasticity and Their Relation with the Numerical Simulation of Strain Localization in Solids

Armero, Francisco; Garikipati, Krishna

UCB/SEMM-1995/09, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1995-09, 31 p.

An analysis of strong discontinuities in inelastic solids at finite strains is presented. Solutions exhibiting this type of discontinuities characterized by by a discontinuous displacement field are shown to make mathematical sense in a classical, multiplicative plasticity continuum model if the softening modulus is reinterpreted as a singular distribution. Physically the softening response of the material is localized along the discontinuity.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-95-09.pdf (2 MB)