Kinematic limit analysis modelling by a regularization approach and finite element method

Kinematical approach by limit analysis is one of the fundamental methods used to predict the plastic limit state and it is applied successfully to deal with engineering problems in solid mechanics. The kinematical approach consists of minimizing the plastic dissipation power throughout the body, produced by plasticity, which involves functional with norm integrand. Besides, to derive the stress eld within the body, one uses the inverse plastic law that is a subdi erential of the dissipation power. The complexity and possible singularity in the derivatives of functionals become a source of many numerical troubles. To overcome these encountered di culties, we propose a solving algorithm by using a regularization procedure on the basis of the inf-convolution operation. Some numerical applications by plane strain or axisymmetric nite element method are presented to illustrate the algorithm