Applied Plasticity

Intended for graduate students in mechanical, civil, or structural engineering, or in applied mechanics, this text covers advanced topics in plasticity that have thus far been accessible only in review articles widely scattered throughout the literature. Practicing engineers will thus also find it a useful reference. The book begins with the fundamentals of the mathematical theory of plasticity, presented in considerable detail, making the text self-sufficient. The discussion then turns to the theory of plane plastic stress and its applications to structural analysis and sheet metal forming. This is followed by treatments of axially symmetrical systems and some three-dimensional problems; treatments of the plastic behavior of plates and shells, discussed mainly from the point of view of limit analysis; and treatments of the plasticity of metals with fully developed orthotropic anisotropy including the plastic behavior of anisotropic sheets. The generalized tangent-modulus theory of buckling in the plastic range for columns, plates, and shells is treated from the point of view of the bifurcation phenomenon. The concluding chapter deals with a wide range of topics in dynamic plasticity including wave propagation, armor penetration, and structural impact in the plastic range. In view of the rapidly growing interest in computational methods, an appendix presents the fundamentals of a finite-element method for metal-forming problems.