Advanced applications of BEM to three-dimensional problems of monotonic and cyclic plasticity

Abstract An advanced formulation of the boundary-element method (BEM) has been developed for three-dimensional inelastic analysis under both monotonic and cyclic loading. The analysis uses isoparametric shape functions to model complex geometries and rapid functional variations accurately. The numerical integration of the kernels are carried out by devising suitable automatic sub-segmentation which controls the error in the integration. The formulation has been applied to a number of three-dimensional elastoplastic problems involving monotonic and cyclic loading to demonstrate that it can be used for realistic engineering plasticity problems.