Bounded Elastic Moduli Multiplier Technique for Limit Loads: Part 2—Case Studies

Abstract

Part 1 of the article provides the theoretical underpinnings of a new method to determine statically admissible stress distributions in a structure, called bounded elastic moduli multiplier technique (BEMMT). It is shown that this method offers statically admissible stress distributions better than the power law and closer to elastic-plastic solutions for textbook cases such as thick cylinder, beam, etc. This part of the article offers several numerical examples to demonstrate the robustness of the method. Upper and lower bound limit loads are calculated using iterative elastic analyses using both power law and BEMMT. These results are compared with the ones obtained from elastic-plastic FEA. Consistently BEMMT has outperformed power law when it comes to estimating lower bound limit loads.