Plastic collapse analysis of cracked structures using extended isogeometric elements and second-order cone programming

We investigate a numerical procedure based on extended isogeometric elements in combination with second-order cone programming (SOCP) for assessing collapse limit loads of cracked structures. We exploit alternative basis functions, namely B-splines or non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) in the context of limit analysis. The optimization formulation of limit analysis is rewritten in the form of second-order cone programming (SOCP) such that interior-point solvers can be exploited efficiently. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate reliability and effectiveness of the present method.