IMPLICIT PROCEDURES FOR THE SOLUTION OF ELASTOPLASTIC PROBLEMS BY THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

In the application of the boundary element method for the solution of elastoplastic problems, explicit incremental-iterative techniques have been predominantly used. Such procedures are based on a single matrix recursive relation which involves the stresses, the inelastic strains and the elastic solution. The simplicity of these formulations and their easy computational implementation partially justify the absence of attention that has been given to the search of new solution routines, although the number of iterations per load increment is usually high. Implicit alternative approaches for the solution of general elastoplastic problems are presented here. These solution techniques are more general than the explicit ones, which can be treated as a particular case, and have two important features: reduced number of iterations and increased computer effort for each load increment. In the end of the paper, a discussion about the efficiency of the implicit procedures is included and results obtained for some test problems are presented.