Elastoplastic Integration Method of Mohr-Coulomb Criterion

Abstract

A new method for implicit integration of the Mohr-Coulomb non-smooth multisurface plasticity models is presented, and Koiter’s requirements are incorporated exactly within the proposed algorithm. Algorithmic and numerical complexities are identified and introduced by the nonsmooth intersections of the Mohr-Coulomb surfaces; then, a projection contraction algorithm is applied to solve the classical Kuhn–Tucker complementary equations which provide the only characterization of possible active yield surfaces as a special class of variational inequalities, and the actual active yield surface is further determined by iteration. The basic idea is to calculate derivatives of the yield and potential functions with the expressions in the principal stresses and perform the return manipulations in the general stress space. Based on the principal stress characteristic equation, partial derivatives of principal stresses are calculated. The proposed algorithm eliminates the error caused by smoothing the corner of Mohr-Coulomb surfaces, avoids the numerical singularity at the intersections in the general stress space, and does not require the stress transformation needed in the principal stress space method. Lastly, several numerical examples are given to verify the validity of the proposed method.