Incorporation of Strain Hardening Effect Into Simplified Limit Analysis

In this paper, a method for determining limit loads in the components or structures by incorporating strain hardening effects is presented. This has been done by including a certain amount of the strain hardening into limit load analysis, which normally idealizes the material to be elastic perfectly plastic. Typical strain hardening curves such as bilinear hardening and Ramberg–Osgood material models are investigated. This paper also focuses on the plastic reference volume correction concept to determine the active volume participating in plastic collapse. The reference volume concept in combination with $mα$-tangent method is used to estimate lower-bound limit loads of different components. Lower-bound limit loads obtained compare well with the nonlinear finite element analysis results for several typical configurations with/without crack.