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Bounds and Estimates on Inelastic Deformations

  • Design codes require to demonstrate that certain limits of inelastic deformation are not exceeded during the service life of a structure. If the loading is cyclic, inelastic strains may accumulate cycle by cycle and may exceed specified allowables after a number of cycles before a stationary state (elastic or plastic shakedown) is achieved, or the inelastic strains may grow unboundedly due to a ratchetting mechanism. In principle, inelastic deformations can be calculated by performing evolutive (step-by-step) inelastic analyses. These require specific information, which is, however, not always available, such as detailed constitutive modelling and loading history. Furthermore, evolutive inelastic analyses are very costly. Therefore, simplified inelastic analyses are desirable to provide at least partial information about structural behaviour: more specifically, upper bounds on, or estimates of, elastic-plastic-creep deformations. Some simplified methods are envisaged by design codes (as pointed out in Chapter 2). However, they areDesign codes require to demonstrate that certain limits of inelastic deformation are not exceeded during the service life of a structure. If the loading is cyclic, inelastic strains may accumulate cycle by cycle and may exceed specified allowables after a number of cycles before a stationary state (elastic or plastic shakedown) is achieved, or the inelastic strains may grow unboundedly due to a ratchetting mechanism. In principle, inelastic deformations can be calculated by performing evolutive (step-by-step) inelastic analyses. These require specific information, which is, however, not always available, such as detailed constitutive modelling and loading history. Furthermore, evolutive inelastic analyses are very costly. Therefore, simplified inelastic analyses are desirable to provide at least partial information about structural behaviour: more specifically, upper bounds on, or estimates of, elastic-plastic-creep deformations. Some simplified methods are envisaged by design codes (as pointed out in Chapter 2). However, they are based on specific configurations of geometry and loading or they adopt heuristic assumptions, the reasonability of which is not always evident for general applicability within the scope of these codes. Accordingly, design codes seem to require improvements. Several simplified methods are reviewed in the present Report and might serve as alternatives to those suggested by design codes. Simplified methods can be grouped in two classes: (a ) procedures intended to determine a safety factor against a critical event of the global structure (such as collapse); (b ) techniques apt to provide information on local quantities (such as inelastic strain) associated to inelastic structural responses. Procedures of class (a ) and some of their recent extensions are briefly surveyed in Chapter 3. Subclasses of category (b ) are discussed in the subsequent Chapters, with emphasis on their operative peculiarities and on their practical usefulness or potentialities. Upper bounds in plasticity (Chapter 4 and Appendix A) can be computed by various approaches, basically by satisfying a set of equations and inequalities and by carrying out some optimisation procedure. To within the consequences of modelling errors, residual post shakedown quantities are guaranteed to be bounded from above: this circumstance is referred to by the adjective "rigorous". A number of bounding inequalities can be proved. Usually, the better (lower) the bound, the more expensive is its computation. However, computational advantages over other simplified approaches can hardly be ascertained in general. Upper bounds in creep (Chapter 5) are based on general rigorous mechanical foundations, but the applications available mostly concern particular cases employing "ad hoc" imaginative, sometimes heuristic assumptions which are not easy to transfer to other cases. Mostly, elastic-perfectly plastic material behaviour and the Bailey-Orowan creep model are assumed. Some simplified methods, such as the British shakedown method (Chapter 6), intend to estimate residual stress fields after elastic shakedown (the British method also, in certain circumstances, after plastic shakedown). They adopt empirically corroborated conjectures, rather than rigorous arguments. Material hardening is neglected. Zarka's method (Chapter 7 and 8 and Appendix B) provides estimates of the mean strain in case of elastic shakedown and, in addition, a lower and an upper estimate of strain range in case of plastic shakedown, by adopting some heuristic assumptions. The validity of these assumptions is difficult to assess in practical applications. Material hardening is required. The method developed by Ladevèze and coworkers (Chapter 9 and Appendix C) is not, strictly speaking, a simplified method, in the sense that it provides the same kind of information as rigorous evolutive analyses. The simplification lies in the solution process, which can be stopped after a few iterations since each one of these concern the whole time interval of interest. Thus estimates are achieved of the structural inelastic response over a large time interval (much larger than the time step in an evolutive analysis). General material models are admitted. None of the simplified methods reviewed in the present Report can directly be recommended for general practical use in nuclear design situations. However, some of them seem to have at least no less potentialities than the methods mentioned so far by design codes. Further work is necessary to clarify the conditions under which they are advantageous.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author: Giulio Maier, Claudia Comi, Alberto Corigliano, Umberto Perego, Hartwig HübelORCiDGND
ISBN:92-827-5006-X
Publisher:Commission of the European Communities
Place of publication:Luxembourg
Document Type:Book
Language:English
Year of publication:1996
Tag:Ladeveze-method; Zarka's method; inelastic deformation; shakedown; simplified methods
Number of pages:286
Comment:
Nuclear Science and Technology, EUR 16555 EN
Faculty/Chair:Fakultät 6 Architektur, Bauingenieurwesen und Stadtplanung / FG Baustatik, Stahlbau, FEM
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