DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF ELASTOPLASTIC FLEXURAL PLATES BY THE D/BEM

A direct domain/boundary element method is developed for the dynamic response analysis of thin elasto-plastic flexural plates of arbitrary geometry and boundary conditions subjected to any lateral loading history. The method employs the elastostatic fundamental solution of thin flexural plates in a time domain integral formulation. Thus, the plasticity effect, the inertial load and the external lateral appear in domain integrals in the boundary integral formulation of the problem. This requires a boundary as well as an interior discretization of the plate. Quadratic isoparametric boundary and interior elements are employed for increased accuracy. The solution is obtained by an explicit time integration scheme employed on the incremental form of the matrix equations of motion. The incremental plastic moments needed to evaluate the plasticity effect are calculated by a finite element methodology to avoid the evaluation of highly singular terms. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the proposed method and compare it with the finite element method.