Boundary element method for shear deformable plates with combined geometric and material nonlinearities

In this paper a new boundary element formulation for shear deformable plate theory with combined geometric and material nonlinearities is presented. The material is assumed to undergo large deflection with small strains. The von Mises criteria is used to evaluate the plastic zone and an elastic perfectly plastic material behaviour is assumed. An initial stress formulation is used to formulate the boundary integral equations. The domain integrals involving geometrical and material nonlinear terms are evaluated using a cell discretization technique. A total incremental method is applied to solve the nonlinear boundary integral equations. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity and the accuracy of the proposed formulation.