FG Baustatik, Stahlbau, FEM
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- Scientific journal article peer-reviewed (2) (remove)
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- Zarka's method (2) (remove)
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In case of cyclic loading, strain may accumulate due to a ratcheting mechanism until the state of shakedown is possibly achieved. Design Codes frequently require strain limits to be satisfied at the end of the specified lifetime of the structure. In addition, the strain range is required for performing fatigue analyses in case of plastic shakedown. However, little guidance is usually provided by Design Codes on how the accumulated strains and strain ranges are to be calculated, and some of the guidelines implemented in Design Codes are not well founded and may therefore be misleading. This is, for example, true for the ASME B&PV Code, Section III. Of course, strains and strain ranges can be determined by means of incremental elastic-plastic analyses, which require to go step-by-step through many cycles of a given load histogram until the state of shakedown is reached. This is rather costly in terms of engineering time and numerical effort. As an alternative, simplified methods can be adopted, e.g. the Simplified Theory of Plastic Zones (STPZ) as used in the present paper. Being a direct method, effects from load history are disregarded. The theory is described shortly and illustrated by some examples. It is shown that the Simplified Theory of Plastic Zones is well suited to provide reasonable estimates of strains accumulated in the state of elastic and plastic shakedown at the cost of few linear elastic analyses.
As elastic–plastic fatigue analyses are still time consuming the simplified elastic–plastic analysis (e.g. ASME Section III, NB 3228.5, the French RCC-M code, paragraphs B 3234.3, B 3234.5 and B3234.6 and the German KTA rule 3201.2, paragraph 7.8.4) is often applied. Besides linearly elastic analyses and factorial plasticity correction (Ke factors) direct methods are an option. In fact, calculation effort and accuracy of results are growing in the following graded scheme: a) linearly elastic analysis along with Ke correction, b) direct methods for the determination of stabilized elastic–plastic strain ranges and c) incremental elastic–plastic methods for the determination of stabilized elastic–plastic strain ranges.
The paper concentrates on option b) by substantiating the practical applicability of the simplified theory of plastic zones STPZ (based on Zarka's method) and – for comparison – the established Twice-Yield method. The Twice-Yield method is explicitly addressed in ASME Code, Section VIII, Div. 2. Application relevant aspects are particularly addressed. Furthermore, the applicability of the STPZ for arbitrary load time histories in connection with an appropriate cycle counting method is discussed.
Note, that the STPZ is applicable both for the determination of (fatigue relevant) elastic–plastic strain ranges and (ratcheting relevant) locally accumulated strains. This paper concentrates on the performance of the method in terms of the determination of elastic–plastic strain ranges and fatigue usage factors. The additional performance in terms of locally accumulated strains and ratcheting will be discussed in a future publication.