Strain hardening in the moving hinge method

Abstract The moving hinge method is very effective in dealing with large displacement problems. However, it appears that this method has been mainly applied for a rigid-perfectly plastic material, despite some earlier attempts to consider a strain hardening material. The purpose of this paper is to expound on the effect of strain hardening, and, to incorporate it into the moving hinge equation. In order to do so, the energy dissipation during the curvature jump at the moving hinge is treated as a loading/reverse loading process over an infinitesimal duration of load application. The proposed method accounts for both isotropically and kinematically hardening materials. Experiments on aluminum rings compressed between two wedges are performed to validate the adequacy of the analysis. The results indicate a favourable agreement between the analysis and experiments. It should be noted that the present analysis gives an upper bound solution. Caution should be exercised since the accuracy depends on the chosen deformation mode.