Strain hardening in the moving hinge method (Q1328750)

The authors presented the moving hinge method for strain hardening materials. The moving hinge method is very effective in dealing with large displacement problems. However, it appears that this method has been earlier mainly applied to a rigid-perfectly plastic material. The authors tried to take strain hardening into account and incorporate it into the moving hinge equations. In doing so, the energy dissipation during the curvature jump at the moving hinge is treated as a loading- reverse loading process over an infinitesimal duration of load application. The proposed method accounts for both isotropically and kinematically hardening materials. Experiments on aluminum rings compressed between two edges are performed to validate the accuracy of the analysis. It is seen that the results indicate that the analysis is in quite good agreement with experiment. The work is a good initiation to apply the moving hinge method to strain hardening materials and may be very useful for researchers working in the area of plasticity of structures.