Large Deflections of an Elastoplastic Strain-Hardening Cantilever

Abstract

This theoretical analysis of an elastoplastic cantilever examines the effects of linear strain-hardening and the development of partial elastic unloading when deflections become large. For a vertical force at the tip, unloading modifies the distribution of curvature in a substantial internal segment after the deflections become very large, but it has a negligible effect on the tip displacement. The analysis uses a bilinear stress-strain constitutive relation that results in slightly better agreement with previous experiments than a corresponding bilinear approximation for the moment-curvature relation.