The unification of hypo-plastic and elasto-plastic theories

A unifying theory of plasticity is developed that allows deducing models with either hypo-plastic, elastoplastic or hyper-plastic constitutive structures. Elasto-plasticity is shown to be a singular case of hypo-plasticity. It is further demonstrated that certain conditions can be imposed to generate a new hierarchy of thermodynamically consistent hypo-plastic models, with a hyper-plastic structure as a singular case. The unifying theory is powerfully bridging between the tools created specifically for advancing models under either of those previous formulations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.