A COMPUTER-ORIENTED PROCEDURE FOR THE YIELD LINE ANALYSIS OF SLABS

The yield line method is a simple and versatile method for the evaluat ion of the collapse load of slabs. It has the disadvantage that for al l but the simplest examples it requires a tedious search for the poten tial modes of collapse, each of which must be investigated so that the mode which corresponds to the lowest upper bound to the collapse load may be identified. To overcome the difficulty, several authors have a ttempted to develop a computer procedure. The drawbacks of their appro ach have been either the requirement of voluminous input data or the a rbitrary and manual search for new yield line patterns in successive i terations. In the present work the equations required for the yield li ne analysis of the edge supported slabs are presented so as to impleme nt the procedure in a computer program. The search direction to obtain a new pattern in successive iterations is based on a nonlinear simple x algorithm. The procedure is illustrated with the help of numerical e xamples. A complete listing of the software package written in FORTRAN is given in an appendix.