Piecewise linear elastic–plastic analysis

The purpose of this paper is to show that a mathematical programming method, due to Maier and his co‐workers, of nonlinear structural analysis can be rerformulated so that greater computational efficiences are achived. The methods are designed for a class of elastic–plastic structures under ‘piecewise linear’ assumptions and solve among others the problem of determining the stresses and strains in the structure. The reformulation gives rise to a class of mathematical programming problems calles a ‘n by dn linear complementarity problem’, for which the author has developed an efficient algorithm. It will be explained why and by how much the proposed method (the reformulation and its solution by the author's algorithm) solves the structural problems more efficiently than the existing one. Results of a systematic computer experiment supporting the efficiency of the proposed method are also presented.