Plane strain finite element analysis of pressure sensitive plasticity with strong discontinuity

Numerical simulations of localized deformation in solids should capture the structural phenomenon of localization and associated loss of material body strength in a manner independent of spatial discretization, Many regularization techniques have been proposed to address the ill posedness associated with rate-independent softening plasticity that leads to mesh-dependent numerical simulations. One approach to alleviating mesh dependence is the strong discontinuity approach, which represents localized deformation as a slip surface within a plasticity model; a strong discontinuity is a discontinuous displacement held. This approach is used in this paper to formulate a plane strain, pressure sensitive, nonassociative plasticity model with strong discontinuity and to implement the model, along with an enhanced bilinear quadrilateral element, via an assumed enhanced strain method. Numerical examples demonstrate mesh independence of the method for pressure sensitive materials. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ah rights reserved.