Nonlocal and gradient rate plasticity

This paper deals with a formulation of nonlocal and gradient plasticity with internal variables. The constitutive model complies with local internal variables which govern kinematic hardening and isotropic softening and with a nonlocal corrective internal variable defined either as the sum between a new internal variable and its spatial weighted average or as the gradient of a measure of plastic strain. The rate constitutive problem is cast in the framework provided by the convex analysis and the potential theory for monotone multivalued operators which provide the suitable tools to perform a theoretical analysis of such nonlocal and gradient problems. The validity of the maximum dissipation theorem is assessed and constitutive variational formulations of the rate model are provided. The structural rate problem for an assigned load rate is then formulated. The related variational formulation in the complete set of state variable is contributed and the methodology to derive variational formulations, with different combinations of the state variables, is explicitly provided. In particular the generalization to the present nonlocal and gradient model of the principles of Prager–Hodge, Greenberg and Capurso–Maier is presented. Finally nonlocal variational formulations provided in the literature are derived as special cases of the proposed model.