Plastic analysic using lower bound method

Abstract

This thesis presents a numerical procedure for solving the plastic limit with various types of structural member, including beam, planar frame, space frame and plate. The lower bound method is a crucial part of direct limit analysis which allows to solve the problem depending on the equilibrium and yield condition of the structure. For that reason, this method brings an efficient and safe approach for computing the capacity of material as well as structure. The calculation of elastic analysis, in particular, is performed firstly with the application of finite element method, after that, the process of plastic analysis is carried out thanks to not just the Gaussian integral which allows to approximate the result of integration but also the assistance of optimization toolboxes: built-up function in MATLAB for linear optimization and Mosek program for second order cone and second order rotated cone optimization. In this paper, the computer programming plays a decisive role in completing the method and giving the solution because of requirement in order to treat with enormous data volume. Eventually, there are plenty of numerical examples are examined and compared with analytical and literature results to illustrate the performance of this computational technique.