A Path-Following Method Based on Plastic Dissipation Control

A path-following method that is based on controlling incremental plastic dissipation is presented. It can be applied for analysis of an elasto-plastic solid or structure. It can be also applied for complete failure computation of a solid or structure that is performed by using a material failure model. In thiswork, we applied it for computations with the embedded-discontinuity finite elements that use rigid-plastic cohesive laws with softening to model material failure process. The most important part of the path-following method is the constraint function. Several constraint functions are derived and proposed for geometrically nonlinear small strain elastoplasticity with linear isotropic hardening. The constraint functions are also derived for the embedded-discontinuity finite elements. In particular, they are derived for 2-d solid (and frame) embedded-discontinuity finite elements that describe cohesive stresses (or forces and moments) in the discontinuity curve (or point) by rigid-plasticity with softening. Numerical examples are presented in order to illustrate performance of the discussed path-following method.