Implicit time integration for pseudodynamic tests: Convergence and energy dissipation

The convergence and energy-dissipation characteristics of an unconditionally stable implicit time integration scheme that has been adopted for pseudodynamic testing are examined in this paper. A convergence criterion is derived for general multiple-degree-of-freedom softening systems. Furthermore, it is shown that undesired loading and unloading cycles can be avoided in numerical iterations by scaling down the incremental corrections. Finally, it is proved that the total energy dissipation introduced by the residual convergence errors and proposed numerical correction is always positive for any softening structures