The analysis of cyclically loaded creeping structures for short cycle times

In a recent paper 1] it was shown that the evaluation of certain bounding solutions for a structure subjected to cyclic loading was equivalent to assuming that the cycle time Δt was short compared with a stress redistribution time. Comparisons between values which are likely to occur in creep design situations indicated that Δt may often be assumed to be small and the bounding solution may be expected to closely approximate the actual stress history. In this paper the solution for the limiting case when Δt → 0 is evaluated for a class of constitutive relationships which may be expressed in terms of a finite number of state variables. Strain-hardening viscous, visco-elastic and Bailey-Orowan equations are discussed and particular solutions for which the residual stresses remain constant in time are derived. The solution for a non-linear visco-elastic model indicates that, for the stationary cyclic state, the constitutive equation need only predict the creep strain over a discrete number of cycles and need not predict the strains during a cycle. This observation should considerably simplify creep analysis.The solution of a simple example demonstrates the similarity between the predicting of the various constitutive relationships for isothermal problems. In fact they provide virtually identical solutions when expressed in terms of reference stress histories. The finite element solution of a plate containing a hole and subjected to variable edge loading is also presented for a viscous material. The solutions show behaviour which is similar to that of the two bar structure.