Description
The intention of this book is to bridge the gap between undergraduate texts in engineering plasticity and the many excellent books in computational plasticity aimed at more senior graduate students, researchers, and practising engineers working in solid mechanics. The book is in two parts. The first introduces microplasticity and covers continuum plasticity, the kinematics of large deformations and continuum mechanics, the finite element method, implicit and explicit integration of plasticity constitutive equations, and the implementation of the constitutive equations, and the associated material Jacobian, into finite element software. In particular, the implementation into the commercial code ABAQUS is addressed (and to help, we provide a range of ABAQUS material model UMATs), together, importantly, with the tests necessary to verify the implementation.
Our intention, wherever possible, is to develop a good physical feel for the plasticity models and equations described by considering, at every stage, the simplification of the equations to uniaxial conditions. In addition, we hope to provide a reasonably physical understanding of some of the large deformation quantities (such as the continuum spin) and concepts (such as objectivity) which are
often unfamiliar to many undergraduate engineering students who demand more than just a mathematical description.
The second part of the book introduces a range of plasticity models including those for superplasticity, porous plasticity, creep, cyclic plasticity, and thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF). We also describe a number of practical applications of the plasticity models introduced to demonstrate the reasonable maturity of continuum plasticity in engineering practice. We hope, above all, that this book will help all those—undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and practising engineers—who need to move on from knowledge of undergraduate plasticity to modern practice in computational plasticity. Our aims have been to encourage development of understanding, and ease of passage to the more advanced texts on computational plasticity.
