Limit analysis of strain-hardening viscoplastic cylinders under internal pressure by using the velocity control: Analytical and numerical investigation

The paper aims to assess plastic limit loads of thick-walled hollow cylinders of strain-hardening viscoplastic materials under internal pressure. Particularly, the problem concerned features in the interaction between strengthening and weakening behavior during the deformation process. Therefore, the relating onset of instability and the stability condition also deserve to be further investigated. Analytical and finite-element limit analysis efforts are both made for complete and comparative investigation. By the concept of sequential limit analysis, the plastic limit loads were acquired by solving a sequence of limit analysis problems via computational optimization techniques. Applying the velocity control as a computational strategy to simulate the action of pressure, the paper investigates analytically and numerically the plastic limit load, the onset of instability and the stability condition of plane-strain circular cylinders. Especially, analytical solutions of the onset of instability were solved explicitly by the fixed point iteration. Validation of the present analytical and finite-element efforts was made completely with good agreement between the analytical solutions and the numerical results.