NUMERICAL APPROXIMATIONS OF PROBLEMS IN PLASTICITY - ERROR ANALYSIS AND SOLUTION ALGORITHMS

The initial-boundary Value problem of elastoplasticity is considered i n the form of a variational inequality, with primary unknowns the disp lacement, plastic strain and internal variables. The well-posedness of this problem is reviewed, and results are presented for the convergen ce of a new fully discrete scheme, in which a non-differentiable funct ional characteristic of this problem is replaced by an appropriate dis crete function. It is shown that convergence of this approximation is at the same rate as that for approximations based on the use of the or iginal functional, and that the scheme is stable. Some iterative solut ion algorithms are discussed. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.